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Meat Balls

A savory meatball made from veal, beef, herbs, and bread, fried and added to soup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and marjoram match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,225 recipes. Both carry terpineol, which smells pine, woody. The science ↓

Meat Balls

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meatballs

  1. In a large bowl, mix the veal, beef, thyme, parsley, marjoram, onion, mace, cloves, nutmeg, egg yolks, crumbled bread, pepper, and salt with your hands.

  2. Mold the mixture into balls the size of walnuts.

Fry and finish

  1. Fry the meatballs in lard until browned.

  2. In the same lard, add flour and stir until well cooked to make a browning.

  3. Add this browning to the soup and place the meatballs in the soup whole.

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. Thyme + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).

  2. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Parsley + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,979 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Marjoram + clovetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Thyme + clovetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Lean veal
Provides tender, mild body to the meatball mixture.
Fat beef
Adds fat that keeps the meatballs moist and flavorful during frying.
Egg yolks
Bind the mixture together so the meatballs hold their shape.
Crumbled bread
Absorbs moisture and keeps the meatballs tender rather than dense.
Flour (in the method)
Cooks in the lard to form a browning that colors and thickens the soup.

The step that matters

Cooking the flour in the lard to make a browning. Flour must be stirred and cooked long enough to turn golden-brown and lose its raw taste. Too little cooking leaves a pasty, floury flavor, while over-browning makes it bitter.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, beef, thyme, parsley, marjoram, onion, clove):

  1. Winter savoryfits better
  2. Sagefits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, beef, thyme, parsley, marjoram, onion, clove. 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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