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Egg Balls for Soup

Hard-boiled eggs are mashed with a raw yolk, flour, pepper, salt, and parsley, formed into balls, and boiled briefly.

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 for Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the eggs

  1. Boil the three eggs for 20 minutes.

  2. Place the boiled eggs in cold water.

  3. Mash the yolks with the raw egg yolk, flour, pepper, salt, and parsley.

Shape and cook

  1. Form the mixture into balls.

  2. Boil the balls for 3 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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

Hard-boiled eggs
Provide the main body of the balls, with mashed yolks giving a rich, firm texture.
Raw egg yolk
Binds the mashed mixture and sets during boiling, helping the balls hold their shape.
Flour
Absorbs moisture in the mashed mixture, making it easier to form and keep together.

The step that matters

Boiling the balls. The raw yolk sets as it heats and is what binds the balls together. A gentle boil lets it set evenly, while a vigorous boil can break the balls apart.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, flour, pepper):

  1. Turmericfits about as well
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Nutmegfits about as well
  4. Jalapenofits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, flour, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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