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Paste for Rissoles

A dough made from flour, eggs, butter, milk, and salt used to encase meat for frying.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Paste for Rissoles

Ingredients

Directions

Make the paste

  1. Place 2 handfuls of flour on a clean surface and make a well in the center.

  2. Add 2 whole eggs, 1 egg yolk, a bit of butter, salt, and 2-3 tablespoons of milk to the well. Mix the ingredients well.

  3. Roll the dough out as thin as possible, shaping it over your hands to make it very thin.

Shape and fry

  1. Roll prepared meat into balls like croquettes and lay them in a line on the paste.

  2. Fold the paste over the meat and cut the folded paste into half circles with a knife.

  3. Prick a hole in each half circle.

  4. Fry in hot lard until golden.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Forms the structure of the dough that encloses the filling.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add richness and structure as it sets when fried.
Milk
Adds moisture so the dough rolls thin and stays pliable.
Butter
Adds fat, which tenderizes the dough and adds flavor.

The step that matters

Rolling the dough very thin. Thin dough cooks quickly and crisps in hot fat while the filling heats through. If it is thick, it stays doughy and may absorb excess fat before it turns golden.

“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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