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Meat-balls

A dish of meatballs fried in lard served with walnut catsup gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Meat-balls

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meatballs

  1. In a bowl, combine the finely chopped fresh meat, finely rolled dried bread, salt, pepper, cloves, mace, and 1 egg.

  2. Mix the ingredients thoroughly and pound them together.

  3. Form the mixture into balls slightly larger than a hen's egg.

  4. Roll the meatballs in bread crumbs and then in egg.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry the meatballs in hot lard until golden brown.

  2. Serve with a nice gravy flavored with walnut catsup.

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 + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Clove + walnuttop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,592 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Pepper + walnuttop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,039 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Meat + walnuttop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,035 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

Fresh meat
Forms the main body of the meatballs and gives them their savoury flavour.
Dried bread
Absorbs moisture and helps keep the meatballs tender rather than dense.
Egg
Binds the mixture together so the balls hold their shape while frying.
Bread crumbs
Forms a crisp, browned coating on the outside during frying.
Lard
Conducts heat for frying and promotes browning on the outside of the meatballs.

The step that matters

Frying in hot lard. If the lard is not hot enough, the coating absorbs fat slowly and the meatballs turn greasy and pale instead of crisp and golden. Frying at a steady high heat sets the crumb coating quickly and browns it through the Maillard reaction.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, bread, pepper, clove, egg, walnut):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Cinnamonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, bread, pepper, clove, egg, walnut. 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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