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Cheese Balls

Cheese balls are fried balls of grated cheese mixed with beaten egg whites, seasoned with salt and cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Cheese Balls

Why it works: Egg and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 106,462 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Cheese Balls

Ingredients

Directions

Make the cheese balls

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff.

  2. Mix the grated cheese with the beaten egg whites quickly using a spoon.

  3. Dust your hands with flour and mold the mixture into balls twice the size of English walnuts.

Fry and serve

  1. Drop the balls into scalding cottolene and cook for five minutes.

  2. Remove from the fat and drain on a cloth.

  3. Serve hot, seasoned with coarse sea salt and cayenne pepper to taste.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Cheese + peppertop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,861 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Cheese + eggtop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,253 recipes

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

  5. Cheese + flourtop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,860 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Egg whites
Whipped to stiff foam, they lighten the cheese mixture and help the balls puff and hold their shape.
Grated cheese
Provides the main flavour and, once fried, a rich, savoury interior.

The step that matters

Mix the cheese with the egg whites quickly. Whipped egg white foam collapses over time, so folding gently and quickly keeps air in the mixture and helps the balls stay light rather than dense.

“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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