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Meat Rissoles

A puff pastry pastry filled with diced meat and mushrooms, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,525 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Meat Rissoles

Oven, in the book's wordsA rather hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a rather hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the filling

  1. Cut the tender meat (chicken, turkey, or beef) into small dice.

  2. In a saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat until it bubbles. Add the flour and stir for a minute.

  3. Pour in the boiling water or stock, and season with salt and pepper. Add the diced meat and mushrooms, and boil for a few minutes.

  4. Just before removing from heat, stir in the beaten egg.

Assemble and bake

  1. Roll out the puff pastry thinly and cut into pieces about 3 inches long.

  2. Place a large spoonful of the meat mixture on one half of each pastry piece. Fold the other half over, wet the edges with milk, and trim with a fancy cutter.

  3. Brush the tops with egg yolk and bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) 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 + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  2. Pepper + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Butter and flour 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

Puff pastry
Forms the flaky, golden outer case that encloses the filling.
Egg
Beaten egg binds the filling so it holds together when cut and baked.
Flour
Thickens the butter and stock into a sauce that coats the meat.
Butter
Fat that cooks the flour and adds richness to the filling.
Mushrooms
Add savoury, earthy flavour and moisture to the meat mixture.

The step that matters

Just before removing from heat, stir in the beaten egg.. Adding egg to very hot liquid can scramble it into lumps. Stirring it in at the end, off the heat, lets it thicken the filling smoothly.

“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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