Skip to main content
Main

Marrow Balls

A small bone marrow ball made with marrow, egg, breadcrumbs, parsley, and salt, boiled in soup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Egg and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 22,662 recipes. Both carry (e)-2-octenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Marrow Balls

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. Stir the marrow until creamy.

  2. Add the yolk of the egg, salt, and parsley, and mix the mixture well.

  3. Incorporate the bread crumbs into the mixture.

Shape and cook

  1. Whip the egg white until frothy.

  2. Fold the whipped egg white into the mixture.

  3. Form small balls.

  4. Boil the balls in soup for six minutes.

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. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  2. Parsley + breadtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,588 recipes

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

  3. Parsley + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,765 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

Marrow
Provides fat and richness, keeping the balls moist and tender.
Egg
The yolk binds the mixture, and the whipped white adds lightness and lift.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and give the mixture body so it holds its shape.

The step that matters

Folding in the whipped egg white. Whipped egg white traps air that gives the balls lightness. Stirring or beating vigorously deflates the foam, leaving the balls dense, so fold gently until just combined.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Capersfits about as well
  4. Marjoramfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, bread. 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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipesOatmeal BreadOatmeal Bread51 recipes