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Meat Balls with Tomato Sauce

A dish of meatballs simmered in tomato sauce with onions.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and tomato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 20,633 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Meat Balls with Tomato Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the meatballs

  1. Finely chop the cold meat.

  2. In a bowl, combine the chopped meat, wet bread crumbs, egg, and seasoning and mix the mixture well.

  3. Form the mixture into balls, similar to sausage meat.

Make the tomato sauce

  1. In a pan, fry the onions until brown.

  2. Add the left-over gravy and tomatoes to the pan, and season.

  3. Cook the sauce for about 20 minutes.

Cook and serve

  1. Gently place the meatballs into the sauce and cook for about 30 minutes.

  2. Serve the meatballs on a platter and cover with the tomato sauce.

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. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  2. Bread + tomatotop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,013 recipes

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

  3. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. Meat + breadtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,924 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

Cold meat
Forms the body of the meatballs and gives them their main flavor.
Bread crumbs
Soak up the milk and help bind the meatballs so they stay moist.
Egg
Binds the meat and crumb mixture so the balls hold their shape.
Onions
Browning them builds sweetness and savory depth in the sauce.
Tomatoes
Provide acidity and the body of the sauce that coats the meatballs.

The step that matters

Gently place the meatballs into the sauce. Raw meatballs are delicate and can break apart if dropped or stirred hard. Lowering them in gently and simmering keeps them intact while the egg and crumbs set.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, bread, milk, egg, tomato):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, bread, milk, egg, tomato. 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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