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Meat Patties

A fried patty made from ground beef, parsley, and seasonings bound with egg, flour, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 Patties

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Beat the egg in a bowl.

  2. Add flour, baking powder, water, butter, and salt; mix until combined.

  3. Roll out the dough and cut into circles.

Fill and fry

  1. Place ground beef, parsley, salt, and pepper in the center of each circle.

  2. Press the edges together to seal.

  3. Fry the patties in deep fat until golden brown.

  4. Serve immediately with bouillon.

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. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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 dough structure that holds the filling and becomes crisp when fried.
Egg
Binds the dough and adds richness and structure as it sets.
Baking powder
Releases gas that helps the dough puff and lighten during cooking.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderises the dough and contributes to browning.
Ground cooked beef
Provides the savoury, meaty filling that flavours each patty.

The step that matters

Sealing the edges. If the edges are not pressed firmly, the filling can leak out during frying, and trapped air or moisture can cause bursting in hot fat.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, flour, butter, beef, pepper):

  1. Parsleythe original
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Turmericfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, flour, butter, beef, 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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