Name: Egg Balls for Soup
Ingredients: 4 hard-boiled eggs; 1 raw egg yolk; 2 teaspoons flour; ¼ teaspoon pepper; ¼ teaspoon coarse sea salt; 2 tablespoons chopped parsley

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 ↓

Egg Balls for Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Boil four eggs and place them in cold water.

Make the mixture

Mash the yolks with the yolk of one raw egg and flour.
Add pepper, salt, and parsley, and mix well.

Shape and cook

Form the mixture into small balls.
Boil the balls in water for two minutes.

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.

Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together16,675 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together106,462 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together50,459 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Egg + parsleytop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,765 recipes

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

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Hard-boiled eggs: Provide the bulk and body of the mixture, with yolks that mash into a rich filling.
Raw egg yolk: Adds fat and richness, and binds the mashed yolks so the balls hold their shape.
Flour: Absorbs moisture and thickens the mixture so it can be formed into balls.
Parsley: Adds fresh, green aroma and flavour to the mixture.

The step that matters

Forming the balls. If the mixture is too wet or too loose, the balls will not hold their shape during boiling. Mixing well and forming firm, compact balls helps the mixture bind together and stay intact in the water.

Swap the parsley

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

Turmericfits about as well
Parsleythe original
Nutmegfits about as well
Jalapenofits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, flour, pepper. 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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Egg Balls for Soup