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Meat Puffs

Meat puffs are fried balls of seasoned meat, breadcrumbs, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and parsley are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 25,843 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Meat Puffs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. In a bowl, combine the chopped meat, bread crumbs, egg yolks, onion juice, seasoning, parsley, and herbs if using.

  2. Beat the egg whites until stiff and gently fold them into the mixture.

  3. If the mixture is too dry, add a little gravy or stock.

Fry and serve

  1. Form the mixture into balls.

  2. Fry the balls in a bath of boiling hot fat until golden brown.

  3. Serve on a hot steak platter, garnished with parsley.

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

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

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

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

  3. Meat + breadtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,924 recipes

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

  4. Bread + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,588 recipes

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

  5. Bread + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,676 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and bind the meat so the mixture holds its shape.
Egg yolks
Bind the mixture and add richness to the meat.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they lighten the mixture and help it puff when fried.
Cold cooked meat
Forms the main body and flavour of the puffs.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Stiff whites hold air, which gives the puffs their lightness. Overmixing or deflating them with a heavy stir makes the puffs dense and flat.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, bread, egg, parsley. 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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