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Meat Balls for Soup

Small meatballs seasoned with salt, pepper, paprika, parsley, onion juice, celery salt, egg, and flour, fried or poached and added to soup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,810 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Meat Balls for Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meatballs

  1. In a large bowl, combine the meat with salt, pepper, paprika, parsley, onion juice, and celery salt.

  2. Beat in the egg to bind the mixture, then add a little flour.

  3. Roll the mixture into small marble-like balls and sprinkle with flour.

Cook and serve

  1. Fry the balls in butter or poach them in boiling water.

  2. Add the meatballs to the soup just before serving.

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. Parsley + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Meat
Forms the main body of the meatballs and gives them their savory flavor.
Egg
Binds the mixture so the meatballs hold their shape during cooking.
Flour
Absorbs moisture and helps the meatballs keep a firm, dry surface.

The step that matters

Adding the meatballs to the soup just before serving. Meatballs cooked in hot liquid for a long time can become tough and crumbly, and they can lose shape. Adding them late keeps them tender and intact.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, pepper, parsley, celery, egg, flour, butter):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, pepper, parsley, celery, egg, flour, butter. 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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