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Dutch Cheese Balls

Cheese balls made from dry curd, cream, onion, and seasonings, rolled in parsley and served with lettuce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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 ↓

Dutch Cheese Balls

Ingredients

Directions

Make the balls

  1. Mix the dry curd with enough cream or milk to hold it together.

  2. Season with grated onion, salt, and pepper.

  3. Form the mixture into small balls.

Finish and serve

  1. Roll each ball in finely chopped parsley.

  2. Serve with a lettuce salad.

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 + lettucetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,483 recipes

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

  3. Onion + lettucetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,562 recipes

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

  4. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + lettucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,037 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Dry curd
Forms the body of the balls, giving them a soft, crumbly texture.
Cream or milk
Adds moisture so the curd binds into balls that hold their shape.
Grated onion
Adds savory aroma and a mild, sharp flavor to the cheese.

The step that matters

Adding enough cream or milk. Too little liquid leaves the curd crumbly and unable to hold a ball shape, while too much makes the mixture soft and sticky. Add it gradually until the curd just holds together.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (buttermilk, cream, pepper, parsley, lettuce):

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Beetrootfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against buttermilk, cream, pepper, parsley, lettuce. 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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