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Carp Roe Balls

A ball made from carp roe, bread crumbs, egg yolks, and butter, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Carp Roe Balls

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the roe

  1. Cook the carp roe in a mixture of salt, vinegar, and water for 15 minutes.

  2. Drain the roe and chop it finely.

Form and bake

  1. Mix the chopped roe with bread crumbs, egg yolks, and softened butter.

  2. Form the mixture into balls.

  3. Bake the balls until golden brown.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  3. Roe + eggtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together243 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  4. Roe + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together442 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Carp roe
Provides the main body and rich, savory flavor of the balls.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and give the mixture body so the balls hold their shape.
Egg yolks
Bind the mixture together and add richness to the texture.
Butter
Adds fat for moisture and helps the surface brown during baking.

The step that matters

Forming the balls. The mixture must be firm enough to hold its shape. Too much moisture from the roe or butter can make it slack and hard to shape, so the balls may spread or crack in the oven.

“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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