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Beef Balls

A savory dish of ground beef and pork balls simmered in stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Beef Balls

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meatballs

  1. Chop the beef, pork, garlic, bread, onion, and red pepper finely.

  2. Add the egg and salt to the mixture and form into balls.

Brown and simmer

  1. Dip the balls in flour and fry in lard until browned.

  2. Add the stock and browned flour to the balls, cover, and let simmer for about 1 hour.

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 + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Beef + porktop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,690 recipes

    Shared aroma: 12-methyltridecanal (tallowy, beefy).

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

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

  4. Pepper + garlictop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,090 recipes

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

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

Round beef
Provides the main meaty body and richness of the meatballs.
Round pork
Adds fat and tenderness, keeping the meatballs from drying out.
Egg
Binds the chopped meat together so the balls hold their shape.
Fresh bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and keep the meatballs tender rather than dense.
Browned flour
Adds a toasted, nutty flavor and helps thicken the stock into gravy.

The step that matters

Frying the floured balls until browned. Browning creates flavor through the Maillard reaction and sets a crust that helps the meatballs hold together during the long simmer. Pale balls will taste flat.

Swap the garlic

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

  1. Garlicthe original
  2. Parsleyfits about as well
  3. Marjoramfits about as well
  4. Thymefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pepper, pork, egg, bread, onion, 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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