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Fried Veal Balls

Fried veal balls made with finely chopped veal, salt pork, herbs, and spices, coated in flour and fried until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Summer savory and sage match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 237 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Fried Veal Balls

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the balls

  1. In a bowl, mix veal, salt pork, summer savory, salt, sage, and pepper thoroughly with your hands.

  2. Shape the mixture into flattened balls, pressing them to ensure a smooth surface.

  3. Roll the balls in flour.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat drippings in a frying pan and fry the balls until golden brown.

  2. Cook slowly for 30 minutes.

  3. Serve on a platter and pour some of the fat from the frying pan over them.

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. Summer savory + sagetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together237 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Sage + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Summer savory + flourtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together263 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Summer savory + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together671 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Veal + porktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,930 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

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

What each ingredient does

Veal
Provides the main meaty body of the balls, and its fine chopping helps bind them.
Salt pork
Adds fat that keeps the balls moist and carries flavor through the frying.
Flour
Forms a thin crust that browns during frying and helps the surface stay firm.
Drippings
Fry the balls in fat, conducting heat for browning and adding savory flavor.

The step that matters

Cook slowly for 30 minutes. Gentle heat lets the centre cook through before the outside over-browns. Too high a heat can burn the flour coating while the inside stays underdone.

Swap the summer savory

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

  1. Marjoramfits about as well
  2. Summer savorythe original
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Parsleyfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, pork, sage, pepper, flour. 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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