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Egg Balls

Egg Balls are boiled eggs mashed with yolks, salt, pepper, and egg white, formed into balls, rolled in flour, and fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Egg Balls

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the yolks

  1. Boil the eggs for 10 minutes.

  2. Transfer the eggs to cold water until cool, then remove the yolks.

  3. Pound the yolks in a mortar until they form a paste.

  4. Beat the yolks with salt, pepper, and the egg white.

Shape and fry

  1. Form the mixture into balls about the size of a walnut.

  2. Roll the balls in flour.

  3. Fry the balls in butter or chicken fat until browned, being careful not to burn.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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, with yolks setting into a firm, paste-like mixture.
Egg white
Binds the pounded yolk mixture so the balls hold their shape.
Flour
Coats the outside so the balls brown evenly during frying.
Butter or chicken fat
Conducts heat for frying and adds richness and browning to the surface.

The step that matters

Fry the balls until browned, not burned. Flour-coated surfaces brown quickly in hot fat, and the sugars and proteins can scorch before the centre warms through. Moderate heat and watching colour lets the surface brown evenly without turning bitter.

“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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