Skip to main content
Dessert

Cheese Halls

Cheese Halls are fried cheese balls seasoned with red pepper and optional dry mustard, served cold as dessert.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and mustard are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,430 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Cheese Halls

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Shape the balls

  1. Mix the grated cheese with a dash of red pepper.

  2. Form the mixture into balls the size of a nutmeg.

  3. Roll the balls in the yolk of an egg.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry in hot lard until golden brown.

  2. Serve cold for dessert.

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 + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  2. Cheese + mustardtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,805 recipes

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

  3. Cheese + peppertop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,861 recipes

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

  4. Cheese + eggtop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,253 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Egg + mustardtop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,210 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

Grated cheese
Supplies most of the flavour and body, letting the mixture hold its shape when formed into balls.
Egg yolk
Forms a thin coating that helps the balls stick together and gives a golden surface.
Lard
Conducts heat for frying, browning the coating and adding richness.

The step that matters

Fry in hot lard until golden brown. If the lard is too cool, the coating absorbs fat and turns greasy; if it is too hot, the outside browns and burns before the cheese inside has warmed through.

Swap the mustard

The recipe marks mustard as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cheese, pepper, egg):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Asparagusfits about as well
  3. Mustardthe original
  4. Spinachfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against cheese, pepper, egg. 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 cheese balls recipes

with Tomato Sauce 4Cottage 3Fried 3 See all 102 →

You might also like

Cheese CakeCheese Cake55 recipesCream CheeseCream Cheese46 recipesLemon PieLemon Pie37 recipesWhite CakeWhite Cake431 recipes