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Marrow Balls

Small balls of beef marrow, bread crumbs, egg white, parsley, lemon peel, salt, and pepper, cooked in soup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Marrow Balls

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. In a bowl, combine bread crumbs, beef marrow, egg white, parsley, lemon peel, salt, and pepper. Mix until well combined.

  2. Form the mixture into small balls, about the size of marbles.

Cook

  1. Drop the balls into simmering soup.

  2. Cook until the balls rise to the surface.

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 + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  3. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

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

  5. Bread + beeftop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef marrow
Adds richness and fat that keeps the small balls moist as they cook.
Egg white
Binds the crumbs and marrow so the balls hold their shape in liquid.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and add bulk, giving the balls a tender texture.

The step that matters

Drop the balls into simmering soup. Dropping them into a rolling boil can break them apart. A gentle simmer lets the egg white set slowly so the balls cook through and keep their shape.

“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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