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Nut Balls with Cheese

A savory ball made from bread crumbs, hickory nuts, milk, cheese, and egg yolks, then fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and cheese are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,130 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Nut Balls with Cheese

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mixture

  1. Scald the milk in a saucepan.

  2. Add the bread crumbs, hickory nuts, and cheese to the milk.

  3. Stir in the egg yolks last and mix well.

  4. Cook the mixture over low heat until thick.

Shape and fry

  1. Once cool, shape the mixture into balls.

  2. Fry the balls in hot oil until golden brown.

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. Bread + cheesetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,130 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Milk + cheesetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,426 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

  5. Nuts + milktop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together982 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread crumbs
Absorb the milk and give the mixture body so it can hold its shape.
Hickory nuts
Add crunchy texture and a rich, nutty flavor.
Milk
Provides moisture that the crumbs absorb, forming a soft base.
Cheese
Adds savory flavor and fat, and helps bind the mixture as it melts.
Egg yolks
Thicken the mixture on gentle heat and help bind it into a firm dough.

The step that matters

Cook the mixture over low heat until thick. Egg yolks can curdle or scramble if the heat is too high. Gentle heat thickens the mixture evenly, and cooling it fully before shaping keeps the balls firm enough to hold together in hot oil.

Swap the nuts

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

  1. Peasfits better
  2. Pecansfits better
  3. Walnutfits better
  4. Nutsthe original

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