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Cream Soup Balls

Small crumbed balls of stiff flour-and-water sauce flavoured with celery and parsley, baked and served with soup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Evora Bucknum Perkins · From a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 106,462 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Cream Soup Balls

14 balls

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Heat oil in frying pan until hot, not brown.

  2. Add half the flour and rub to a paste.

  3. Add boiling water gradually, stirring until smooth.

  4. Stir in remainder of flour dry.

  5. Cook the sauce until smooth, creamy and well cooked.

  6. Remove from the fire and cool a little.

Shape and coat

  1. Stir in celery, parsley and salt; the mixture will be very stiff.

  2. Stand in cool place until perfectly cold.

  3. Shape into balls 1¼ to 1½ in. in diameter, or cones 1½ in. at the base, or cubes of 1¼ in., or sticks 3½ to 4 in. long by ¾ in. in diameter.

  4. Roll in fine zwieback or cracker crumbs, then in beaten egg (with salt and a tablespoon of water to each egg), then in crumbs again.

Bake and serve

  1. Place on oiled tins a short distance apart and set in cool place 15 minutes before serving.

  2. Bake in a quick oven until a delicate brown and cracked a little.

  3. Serve immediately.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

533Calories
19 gProtein
6 gFat
96 gCarbs

Counts 3 of 5 ingredients. The other 2 aren't in our nutrition table and add nothing above, so the real totals are higher.

What these numbers assume: 3 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Flour1 cup (125g) all-purpose455
Egg1 large egg (50g)78
Salt1 tsp (6g)0
Pastrynot in our table0
Waternot in our table0

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

By Evora Bucknum Perkins. Recipe from a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg).

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. See the original page.

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 + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Pastry flour
Forms the thick starch paste that gives the sauce body and sets the balls firm.
Eggs
Beaten egg coats the balls, helping the crumbs adhere and browning the surface when baked.
Zwieback or cracker crumbs (in the method)
Form a crisp outer coating that browns and cracks in the oven.

The step that matters

Cool the sauce until perfectly cold before shaping. A warm starch paste stays soft and sticky, so the balls lose their shape and crack unevenly. Chilling lets the starch set so the mixture holds its form through coating and baking.

“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.