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Sardine Balls

Sardine balls are small meatballs made from sardines, eggs, breadcrumbs, and spices, fried and served with parsley and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 ↓

Sardine Balls

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Wipe the oil from the sardines and mash them with the hard-boiled eggs until fine.

  2. Add the raw egg yolk, paprika, and melted butter to the mixture.

  3. Soak the bread crumbs in the milk.

  4. Combine the two mixtures and press through a vegetable press or coarse sieve.

Shape and fry

  1. Form the mixture into balls the size of walnuts.

  2. Coat the balls with the beaten egg mixed with water, then roll in bread crumbs.

  3. Fry in deep fat using a frying basket until golden.

Serve

  1. Serve on a doily, garnished with parsley and lemon.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 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

Sardines
Provide the main body and rich, savoury flavour of the balls.
Hard-boiled eggs
Bind the mashed fish into a firm, cohesive mixture.
Raw egg yolk
Adds richness and helps hold the mixture together when set.
Soft bread crumbs
Soaked in milk, they add moisture and a tender texture to the filling.
Melted butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother, more tender mouthfeel.
Bread crumbs (for coating)
Form a crisp, golden browned crust when fried.

The step that matters

Frying the coated balls. Frying in hot deep fat sets the egg coating and browns the crumbs quickly, creating a crisp crust before the soft filling overheats or breaks apart.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, butter, bread, milk, lemon):

  1. Parsleythe original
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Cinnamonfits about as well
  4. Thymefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, butter, bread, milk, lemon. 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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