Why it works: Cream and cherry brandy work together. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 36 recipes. Both carry 2-heptanol, which smells bitter, floral. The science ↓
Beef Balls Raw
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Scrape all the juice from the steak, leaving only the fibrous tissue.
Mix the scraped steak with cream and roll into balls.
Cook
Heat a baking tin until very hot.
Roll the balls rapidly over the hot surface.
Optionally, add a drop of cherry brandy to each ball to mask the flavor.
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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Cream + cherry brandytop 17% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together36 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Rump steak
- Provides the meat that forms the balls, once its juice is scraped away.
- Cream
- Binds the scraped steak so it holds together when rolled into balls.
The step that matters
Rolling the balls rapidly over the hot tin. The surface must be very hot so the outside sears quickly. Slow contact lets the meat release juice and steam, so the balls cook grey and wet rather than browned.
“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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