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Egg Balls

Egg Balls are small dough balls made from cooked and raw egg yolks, flour, and salt, boiled in salted water or broth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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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 ↓

Egg Balls

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dough

  1. Rub the cooked egg yolks to a smooth paste.

  2. Beat the raw egg yolks with salt.

  3. Gradually add the raw yolk mixture to the egg paste.

  4. Stir in enough flour to form a dough.

  5. Roll the dough into small balls.

Cook

  1. Drop the balls into boiling salted water or broth for 5 minutes.

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

Cooked egg yolks
Form a smooth paste that gives the dough body and a rich, tender texture.
Raw egg yolks
Bind the dough and help it set firmly when simmered.
Flour
Provides structure so the mixture holds together as a dough.

The step that matters

Drop the balls into boiling salted water or broth for 5 minutes.. The water must be at a full boil so the outside of each ball sets quickly and the balls keep their shape rather than falling apart or becoming soggy.

“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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