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Egg Balls

Egg balls are small fried balls made from hard‑boiled egg yolks, seasoning, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Egg Balls

Oven, in the book's wordsA warm oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. Rub the yolks of hard-boiled eggs into a paste with a wooden spoon.

  2. Season with salt, pepper or paprika, and melted butter.

  3. Add enough raw egg yolk or white to mold the mixture.

  4. Roll into balls about half the size of a yolk.

Fry and serve

  1. Coat in slightly beaten egg white and dip in flour.

  2. Fry in butter until golden brown.

  3. Serve one ball to each person and add to the soup in the tureen.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Hard-boiled egg yolks
Form the main body of the balls as a crumbly paste that holds together.
Melted butter
Adds richness and moisture to the yolk paste, keeping it tender.
Raw egg yolk or white
Binds the mixture so it can be shaped into balls.
Flour
Forms a dry coating that helps the egg white adhere and gives a light golden crust when fried.

The step that matters

Fry in butter until golden brown. Frying over moderate heat browns the flour coating through the Maillard reaction while the butter adds flavour. Too high a heat scorches the outside before the centre warms, and too low a heat leaves the coating pale and greasy.

“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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