Why it works: Parsley and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,765 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓
Egg Balls
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the eggs
Chop the eggs.
Rub the chopped eggs through a sieve.
Shape and poach
Add the parsley and remaining ingredients.
Moisten the mixture with raw egg yolk until it is easy to handle.
Shape the mixture into small balls.
Poach the balls in boiling water or milk.
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.
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Parsley + eggtop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together18,765 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Eggs
- Provide the main body of the balls, and they set when poached to hold the shape.
- Raw egg yolk
- Adds moisture and binding so the mixture holds together when shaped.
- Parsley
- Adds fresh, green aroma and flavour to the egg mixture.
The step that matters
Moisten the mixture with raw egg yolk until it is easy to handle. Add the yolk gradually and stop once the mixture can be shaped. Too much yolk makes it loose, and the balls may break apart in the hot liquid, while too little leaves it crumbly and hard to form.
“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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