Skip to main content
Main

Meat Balls

A dish of beef or veal meatballs seasoned with pepper, salt, sage, and optional onion, fried in butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and sage match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,388 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Meat Balls

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. In a bowl, combine the chopped beefsteak or veal with pepper, coarse sea salt, sage, and onion if desired.

  2. Add the egg, sweet cream, and a little flour; stir well to combine.

  3. Shape the mixture into balls.

Cook

  1. Fry the meatballs in butter until cooked through.

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 + sagetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sage + oniontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,628 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

Flour and butter 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

Beefsteak or veal
Provides the main body and meaty texture of the meatballs.
Egg
Binds the mixture so the meatballs hold their shape while frying.
Sweet cream
Adds moisture and richness, keeping the meatballs tender.
Flour
Absorbs liquid and helps the mixture hold together.
Butter
Fat for frying that promotes browning and adds flavour.

The step that matters

Shape the mixture into balls. A loose mixture can fall apart in the pan. Stirring the egg, cream and flour well first gives a cohesive mass that holds its shape when handled and fried.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, pepper, sage, egg, cream, flour, butter):

  1. Spinachfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, pepper, sage, egg, cream, flour, butter. 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.

More meatballs recipes

Beef 32for Soup 19Veal 17Swedish 15Force 14Oyster 9 See all 111 →

You might also like

Veal PattiesVeal Patties50 recipesBeef, Mutton, or Veal BrothBeef, Mutton, or Veal Broth6 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipes