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Potato Puff Balls

A savory snack of mashed potato and bread rusk balls boiled and served with tomato sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper 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 ↓

Potato Puff Balls

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. In a bowl, mix the crushed bread rusks and mashed potatoes.

  2. Add the beaten eggs, parsley, pepper, salt, and nutmeg, then mix well.

  3. If the mixture is too loose, add more bread rusks until stiff.

  4. Form the mixture into small balls.

Cook and serve

  1. Bring a pot of salted water to a boil.

  2. Add the balls and cook for 15 minutes until they nearly double in size.

  3. Serve with 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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + nutmegtop 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. Pepper + nutmegtop 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

Bread rusks
Absorb moisture and bind the mixture so the balls hold their shape.
Mashed potatoes
Provide the soft, starchy bulk that gives the puffs their light interior.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and help the balls set firmly when cooked.

The step that matters

Adjusting the mixture's stiffness. If the mixture is too loose, the balls can break apart in boiling water. Adding bread rusks until stiff helps the balls hold together while they cook.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Potatothe original

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