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Egg Balls

Egg Balls are small fried balls made from chopped hard‑boiled eggs, parsley, cheese, breadcrumbs, celery, mayonnaise, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,810 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Egg Balls

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mixture

  1. In a bowl, combine chopped eggs, parsley, cheese, bread crumbs, celery, salt, and pepper. Mix in the mayonnaise dressing until well combined.

  2. Form the mixture into small balls.

Coat and fry

  1. Dip each ball in beaten eggs, then coat with bread crumbs.

  2. Fry the balls in hot lard until golden brown.

Serve

  1. Serve with cream sauce.

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. Parsley + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  4. Cheese + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,130 recipes

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

  5. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Hard-boiled eggs
Form the main body of the balls and give them a soft, creamy filling.
Mayonnaise dressing
Adds moisture and richness so the mixture holds together and stays soft.
Bread crumbs
Bind the mixture and form a crisp, golden coating when fried.
Grated cheese
Adds savory flavour and a little richness to the filling.

The step that matters

Fry the balls in hot lard until golden brown. If the lard is not hot enough, the coating absorbs fat and turns greasy instead of crisp. Frying in hot fat quickly sets the crumb crust, and browning comes from the Maillard reaction at the surface, so the balls should be turned to colour evenly.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Nutmegfits about as well
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, parsley, cheese, bread, 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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