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Cracker Balls for Soup

Cracker balls are sweet butter and egg-coated cracker crumbs formed into balls and dropped into soup to cook.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and parsley are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 28,563 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Cracker Balls for Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Stir the sweet butter in a bowl for a few minutes.

  2. Add 1 or 2 eggs and stir again.

  3. Mix in salt and enough cracker meal to form round balls.

Cook in soup

  1. Drop the balls into boiling soup and cook for 15 minutes.

  2. If desired, add a little chopped parsley for flavor.

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

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

  2. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Egg + parsleytop 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

Sweet butter
Adds richness and fat that keeps the balls tender and flavorful.
Eggs
Bind the cracker meal together so the balls hold their shape.
Cracker meal
Forms the body of the balls and absorbs liquid from the eggs and butter.

The step that matters

Forming the balls. The mixture must be stiff enough to hold a round shape. Adding cracker meal gradually until it binds prevents balls from falling apart in the soup.

Swap the parsley

The recipe marks parsley as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, egg):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, 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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