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Egg Balls for Soup

Egg balls made from boiled egg yolks, raw eggs, butter, pepper, salt, and flour, served in soup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Egg Balls for Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Rub the yolks of the hard boiled eggs to a smooth paste with melted butter, pepper, and salt.

  2. Add the raw eggs and beat until light.

  3. Mix in enough flour to hold the paste together.

  4. Form into balls using floured hands.

Serve

  1. Set the balls in a cool place until just before serving the soup.

  2. Carefully add the balls to the soup and boil for 1 minute.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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
Their yolks form the rich, smooth base of the paste.
Raw eggs
Beaten in, they add structure and help bind the balls as they cook.
Melted butter
Adds fat and richness, keeping the paste smooth and tender.
Flour
Absorbs moisture and gives the paste enough body to hold its shape.

The step that matters

Adding the balls to the soup. The balls are delicate and can break apart if handled roughly. Adding them gently and boiling only briefly lets the raw egg set without overcooking, keeping them intact and tender.

“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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