Name: Force Meat Balls for Soup
Ingredients: 1 cup cooked veal or fowl, minced; 1 handful fine bread crumbs; 4 hard-boiled egg yolks

Why it works: Bread and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 22,662 recipes. Both carry (e)-2-octenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Force Meat Balls for Soup

Ingredients

1 cup cooked veal or fowl, minced
1 handful fine bread crumbs
4 hard-boiled egg yolks

Directions

In a bowl, combine the minced meat with the fine bread crumbs.
Add the yolks of the hard-boiled eggs and mix well.
Form the mixture into small balls.

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.

Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together22,662 recipes

Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).
Veal + breadtop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together3,056 recipes

Shared aroma: cis-3-hexenol (green, grassy).
Veal + eggtop 28% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together6,845 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).