Skip to main content
Main

Meat Balls

A fried meatball made from boiled beef, onion, parsley, stale bread crumbs, nutmeg, egg, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Meat Balls

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. Chop the boiled beef and onion.

  2. Season with salt, pepper, parsley, stale bread crumbs, and nutmeg.

  3. Moisten the mixture with the egg and mix well.

Shape and fry

  1. Form into small balls and roll in flour.

  2. Fry the balls in hot fat 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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

  3. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  5. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Boiled beef
Provides the main body and flavor of the meatball.
Stale bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and help give the meatballs a tender, binding texture.
Egg
Binds the mixture together so the balls hold their shape.
Onion
Adds moisture and savory aroma to the mixture.
Flour
Forms a dry coating that helps the outside brown when fried.

The step that matters

Fry in hot fat until golden brown. The fat must be hot enough to brown the flour coating quickly. If it is too cool, the balls absorb grease and turn soggy instead of crisp and golden.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, pepper, parsley, bread, nutmeg, egg, flour):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pepper, parsley, bread, nutmeg, egg, flour. 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.

More meatballs recipes

Beef 32for Soup 19Veal 17Swedish 15Force 14Oyster 9 See all 111 →

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesRoast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCorned BeefCorned Beef87 recipes