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Egg Balls. No. 1

Egg Balls are small fried balls made from boiled egg yolks, salt, pepper, raw egg white, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Egg Balls. No. 1

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the yolks

  1. Boil the eggs for 10 minutes.

  2. Place them in cold water to cool.

  3. Remove the yolks and pound them into a paste.

Shape and fry

  1. Add salt, pepper, and the raw egg white.

  2. Form the mixture into small balls.

  3. Roll the balls in flour and fry in butter until brown, being careful not to burn.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Hard-boiled egg yolks
Provide the rich, crumbly base that the paste and shaped balls hold together around.
Raw egg white
Binds the pounded yolk paste so the balls keep their shape while frying.
Flour
Forms a dry outer coating that helps the balls brown evenly in the butter.
Butter
Conducts heat into the coating and adds browning and rich flavor as it fries.

The step that matters

Frying the coated balls. Butter browns quickly because its milk solids darken fast at frying heat. Too much heat or too long in the pan scorches the flour coating before the centers warm through, so keep the heat moderate and turn the balls often.

“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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