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Oysters Rissoles

Oyster rissoles are fried balls of oysters, eggs, and cracker meal, seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Oysters Rissoles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. Drain the liquor from the oysters.

  2. Chop the oysters very fine.

  3. In a bowl, mix chopped oysters with beaten eggs and enough cracker meal to form a thick mixture.

  4. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

Fry and serve

  1. Form the mixture into small balls.

  2. Fry the balls in boiling lard until golden brown.

  3. Arrange the rissoles on a napkin and garnish with parsley and lemon slices.

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 + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Oyster + eggtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,103 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

Egg and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 44,316 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

Oysters
Provide the main flavor and the bulk of the filling.
Eggs
Bind the chopped oysters together and help the mixture hold its shape.
Cracker meal
Absorbs moisture and thickens the mixture so the balls hold together when fried.
Lard
Conducts heat for frying and browns the outside to a golden crust.

The step that matters

Fry the balls in boiling lard until golden brown. The fat must be hot enough to crisp the outside quickly. If the lard is too cool, the rissoles absorb grease, turn heavy and may fall apart before a crust forms.

“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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