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Egg Balls

Egg Balls are small, poached balls made from mashed hard-boiled eggs, cayenne pepper, salt, butter, parsley, and a raw egg yolk for moisture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Egg Balls

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the hard boiled eggs and pass them through a sieve.

  2. Add cayenne pepper, salt, butter, and parsley to the eggs.

  3. Moisten the mixture with the raw egg yolk until it is easy to handle.

Shape and cook

  1. Shape the mixture into small balls.

  2. Poach the balls in boiling water or milk.

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. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  3. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Egg + parsleytop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,765 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Hard boiled eggs
Form the main body of the balls, giving them structure and a firm, sliceable texture.
Raw egg yolk
Adds moisture and binding so the mixture holds together when shaped.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, softening the texture of the mixture.

The step that matters

Moisten the mixture with the raw egg yolk. Too little yolk leaves the crumbly egg mixture hard to shape, while too much makes it soft and likely to break apart in the poaching liquid. Add it gradually until the mixture is easy to handle.

“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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