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Beef Balls

Beef balls are boiled beef mixed with onion, parsley, bread crumbs, egg, then formed, coated in flour, and fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Beef Balls

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Boil the beef until tender.

  2. Chop the beef very fine with the onion.

  3. Season with salt, pepper, and parsley.

  4. Add bread crumbs and enough raw egg to bind the mixture.

Shape and fry

  1. Form the mixture into balls.

  2. Dip the balls in flour.

  3. Fry the balls in hot lard until browned.

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 + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  3. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Forms the main body of the meatballs, giving them their meaty texture and flavor.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and keep the meatballs tender rather than dense.
Raw egg
Binds the chopped meat and crumbs so the balls hold their shape.
Onion
Adds moisture and aroma to the meat mixture.
Flour
Coats the outside, helping the surface brown evenly when fried.

The step that matters

Fry the balls in hot lard until browned. Lard must be hot enough to brown the flour coating quickly; if it is too cool, the balls absorb fat and turn greasy and pale, and the interior may not set before the outside overcooks.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pepper, parsley, bread, egg, flour. 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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