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Herb Klosse, or Forcemeat Balls

Herb Klosse is a forcemeat ball made with bread crumbs, potatoes, eggs, herbs, and fried crumbs, boiled and served with butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

Herb Klosse, or Forcemeat Balls

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dumplings

  1. Soak the bread crumbs in a little milk, then squeeze dry.

  2. Mix the bread crumbs with the grated potatoes, flour, eggs, nutmeg, pepper, salt, and minced herbs. Handle the mixture lightly.

  3. Wet your hands and spoon with cold water.

  4. Form the mixture into balls the size of a large walnut.

Cook and serve

  1. Drop the balls into boiling water and let them boil for 10 minutes.

  2. Melt the butter in a saucepan and stir in the fried crumbs.

  3. Drain the klosse, sprinkle with the bread crumbs, and serve immediately.

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. Nutmeg + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Potato + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,855 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Potato + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,052 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the mixture so the balls hold their shape while boiling.
Potatoes
Add starchy body and moisture, giving the dumplings a soft interior.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and lighten the texture of the dumplings.
Flour
Helps bind the mixture and firm up the dumplings slightly.
Parsley
Provides fresh, aromatic herbal flavor throughout the dumplings.

The step that matters

Handle the mixture lightly. Overworking the mixture develops excess binding and makes the dumplings dense and tough, so mix gently and keep the balls loosely formed.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Spinachfits about as well
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, milk, flour, egg, nutmeg, pepper, parsley. 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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