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Meat Balls for Clear Stock

Small meatballs made from veal, salt pork, and crackers, fried and served in clear stock with optional lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Meat Balls for Clear Stock

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meatballs

  1. In a bowl, combine the veal, salt pork, rolled soda crackers, salt, and pepper. Add the raw egg and mix well.

  2. Roll the mixture into balls.

Coat and fry

  1. Dip each ball in the beaten egg, then coat with cracker dust.

  2. Fry the balls until golden brown.

Serve

  1. Place the fried balls in a tureen with sliced hard-boiled eggs.

  2. Add thinly sliced lemon if desired.

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 + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  3. Pork + tomatotop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,843 recipes

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

  4. Tomato + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,592 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Veal + porktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,930 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

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

What each ingredient does

Raw veal
Forms the main body of the meatball and gives it a tender, meaty texture.
Salt pork
Adds fat that keeps the meatballs moist and adds savory flavor.
Soda crackers
Bind the mixture together and help the meatballs hold their shape.
Raw egg
Acts as a binder that helps the mixture set and hold together when cooked.

The step that matters

Fry the balls until golden brown. Frying over steady heat browns the coating and sets the cracker crust, while the interior cooks through. Overcrowding the pan or using heat that is too high can scorch the outside before the centre is done.

“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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