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Force Meat Balls for Soup

A soup featuring meatballs made from minced veal or fowl, bread crumbs, egg yolks, milk, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,466 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓

Force Meat Balls for Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the meatballs

  1. In a bowl, mix the minced meat with fine bread crumbs.

  2. Rub the hard-boiled egg yolks smooth with milk.

  3. Season the mixture with pepper and coarse sea salt.

  4. Add flour and bind everything together with the beaten eggs.

  5. Flour your hands and shape the mixture into small balls, about the size of a nutmeg.

Serve

  1. Drop the meatballs into the soup about 20 minutes before serving.

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. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  2. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Bread + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Minced cooked veal or fowl
Provides the main protein that gives the meatballs their body and bite.
Beaten eggs
Bind the mixture together and help the meatballs hold their shape while cooking.
Fine bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and keep the meatballs tender rather than dense.
Hard-boiled egg yolks
Add richness and a smooth, fine texture to the mixture.

The step that matters

Dropping the meatballs into the soup. Timing matters: the meatballs need about 20 minutes in the simmering soup to cook through. Adding them too early can make them overcook and toughen, while adding them too late leaves them undercooked in the center.

“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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