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Eolls of Cold Meat

A dish of meatballs made from cold cooked meat, bread crumbs, eggs, and spices, served with a creamy sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Eolls of Cold Meat

Ingredients

Directions

Make the meatballs

  1. Mix cold cooked meat with butter, bread crumbs, egg yolks, onion juice, salt, nutmeg, and black pepper.

  2. Heat the mixture in a frying pan until warm, then let it cool.

  3. Form the mixture into balls, dip in beaten egg, then coat with bread crumbs.

  4. Fry the balls in cottolene until golden brown.

Make the sauce

  1. For the sauce, melt butter in a saucepan, add flour, and stir until combined.

  2. Gradually mix in stock and cream, season with salt and pepper, and bring to a boil.

  3. Remove from heat and stir in the beaten egg yolk.

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 + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. Bread + nutmegtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,997 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold cooked meat
Forms the bulk of the meatballs and gives them their main flavour.
Egg yolks
Bind the mixture and add richness and structure as they set.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and help the balls hold their shape.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother, more tender texture.
Flour
Thickens the sauce by swelling in melted butter and stock.
Cream
Adds fat and body, giving the sauce a smoother, richer texture.

The step that matters

Stir the egg yolk in off the heat. Egg yolk thickens when heated, so adding it to a boiling sauce can scramble it. Removing the pan from heat first lets it thicken the sauce gently.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, butter, bread, egg, nutmeg, pepper, sauce):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, butter, bread, egg, nutmeg, pepper, sauce. 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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