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Meat Balls

Small beef meatballs simmered in water with optional Worcestershire, sherry, and caramel, served with a gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour 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 ↓

Meat Balls

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meatballs

  1. In a bowl, mix the minced steak, salt, and white pepper thoroughly.

  2. Form the mixture into small balls, using a little flour on your hands.

Brown and simmer

  1. Heat the butter in a frying pan and add the meatballs.

  2. Turn the meatballs frequently until they are browned all over. Once browned, move the meatballs to the back of the stove.

  3. Nearly fill the pan with water, cover, and let simmer gently for 45 minutes.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. To make the gravy, mix the flour with a little water and boil it in the remaining liquid.

  2. Season the gravy with additional salt, pepper, Worcestershire sauce, sherry, and caramel if desired. Serve the meatballs with the gravy poured over them and garnish with parsley.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,505 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. White pepper + parsleytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  5. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Butter and flour 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

Round steak
Provides the meat that forms the body and bite of the meatballs.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a gravy and lightly coats the meatballs.
Butter
Adds fat for browning the meatballs in the frying pan.
Worcestershire sauce
Adds savory depth and tang to the gravy when used.

The step that matters

Turn the meatballs frequently until browned. Frequent turning lets the surface brown evenly, building flavor through browning reactions and helping the meatballs hold their shape before simmering.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, sauce, sherry, parsley):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, sauce, sherry, 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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