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Cracker Balls for Soup

Small balls made from crackers, eggs, butter, and spices, dropped into soup before serving.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,062 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Cracker Balls for Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Cream the goose-grease or butter together in a bowl.

  2. Add the eggs, parsley, salt, ginger, and nutmeg, then mix well.

  3. Incorporate the rolled soda crackers into the mixture.

Shape and cook

  1. Roll the mixture into small balls.

  2. Drop the balls into boiling soup 5 minutes 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 + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

  2. Ginger + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Parsley + gingertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together676 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  5. Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the mixture together and add structure to the balls.
Goose-grease or butter
Adds fat and richness, and keeps the balls tender.
Rolled soda crackers
Add body and absorb moisture so the balls hold their shape.

Swap the ginger

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, egg, parsley, nutmeg):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, egg, parsley, nutmeg. 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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