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Cheese Balls

A mixture of grated cheese, nuts, spices, and sweet cream formed into balls and rolled in parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Cheese Balls

Why it works: Pepper and parsley 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 ↓

Cheese Balls

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Grate the cheese.

  2. Place the grated cheese in a cool place.

  3. Chop the mixed nuts finely.

Make the mixture

  1. Season the cheese with red pepper and coarse sea salt.

  2. Add the chopped nuts to the cheese.

  3. Stir in the sweet cream until soft but manageable.

Shape and serve

  1. Roll the mixture into balls.

  2. Coat the balls in chopped parsley.

  3. Serve with pie or as part of a salad course.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

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

  2. Mixed nuts + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Cheese + creamtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,655 recipes

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

  4. Cheese + peppertop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,861 recipes

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

  5. Mixed nuts + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together40 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

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

What each ingredient does

Grated common cheese
Provides the main body, rich flavour and savoury bulk of the balls.
Mixed nuts
Add crunch and texture that contrasts with the soft cheese.
Sweet cream
Adds moisture and softness so the cheese mixture holds together when rolled.

The step that matters

Stir in the sweet cream until soft but manageable. Adding too much cream makes the mixture too wet to roll, while too little leaves it crumbly. Cream softens the cheese and binds it, so stop once the mixture is soft yet still holds its shape.

Swap the mixed nuts

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cheese, pepper, cream, parsley):

  1. Walnutfits better
  2. Beansfits better
  3. Chickpeafits better
  4. Mixed nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cheese, pepper, cream, parsley. 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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