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Egg Balls

Small boiled balls made from beaten egg, herbs, breadcrumbs, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper 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 ↓

Egg Balls

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the egg mixture

  1. Beat the egg in a bowl.

  2. Add parsley, pepper, salt, and nutmeg to the egg, then mix in the savory herbs dust.

  3. Make fine breadcrumbs from stale bread and mix with the egg until a soft paste forms.

Shape and cook

  1. Roll the mixture into marble-sized balls and dust with flour.

  2. Drop the balls into boiling water until set.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Parsley + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 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

Egg
Binds the mixture and sets when the balls hit boiling water, holding their shape.
Stale bread breadcrumbs
Absorb the egg and give the paste body so the balls hold together.
Flour
Dusting on the shaped balls keeps them from sticking and helps the surface stay dry.

The step that matters

Drop the balls into boiling water until set. Egg proteins set with heat, so the water must be boiling and the balls should be cooked only until firm. Overcooking makes the egg rubbery, while a cool or gentle bath can leave them loose and falling apart.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Cinnamonfits about as well
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Marjoramfits about as well
  4. Allspicefits about as well

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

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