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Meat Rissoles, German

Meat rissoles made with bacon, minced meat, stale bread, herbs, and spices, then boiled in stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Meat Rissoles, German

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mixture

  1. Fry the bacon until golden brown.

  2. Stir in the chives, salt, pepper, and spice.

  3. Add the minced meat to the pan.

  4. Remove the pan from heat.

  5. Mix in the soaked and squeezed bread.

  6. Let the mixture cool.

Shape and cook

  1. Shape the cooled mixture into egg-sized balls.

  2. Drop the rissoles into boiling stock or broth.

  3. Cook for about 10 minutes.

  4. Serve with gravy.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Chive + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Chive + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,885 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. Meat + breadtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,924 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Minced meat
Provides the main body and savory flavor of the rissoles.
Stale bread
Soaks up moisture and helps bind the mixture so it holds its shape.
Egg
Acts as a binder that sets when heated, holding the rissoles together.
Bacon
Adds fat and smoky, savory flavor, and browns to deepen the taste.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool before shaping. Shaping warm mixture is harder because the fat is soft and the bread is loose, so the balls can fall apart. Cooling firms the fat and lets the binders hold the shape before they are dropped into hot stock.

Swap the chive

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, meat, bread, parsley, pepper):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Chivethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, meat, bread, parsley, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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