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Veal Balls in Curry Sauce

Veal balls simmered in a curry sauce with onions, served over boiled rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Veal Balls in Curry Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the balls

  1. Pass the veal and salt pork through a meat chopper twice.

  2. Add the cracker crumbs, salt, pepper, lemon juice, beaten eggs, and stock. Mix well.

  3. Shape the mixture into balls the size of walnuts.

  4. Brown the balls in fat from the salt pork or butter.

Make the curry sauce

  1. Remove the balls to a saucepan with a tight cover.

  2. Add enough fat to make 4 tablespoons in the pan, then add the sliced onion.

  3. Stir until the onion is a delicate brown, then add the curry powder and flour. Mix well.

  4. Add the stock or water and salt, then pour over the meatballs, ensuring they are half covered.

Simmer and serve

  1. Cover closely and simmer gently for 40 minutes.

  2. Optionally, add lemon slices about 10 minutes before serving.

  3. Serve with boiled rice in the center of a platter, arranging the meatballs around it.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Pork + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,214 recipes

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

  3. Veal + porktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,930 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  4. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Veal
Forms the main body of the balls, giving them a tender, meaty texture when cooked.
Salt pork
Adds fat that keeps the balls moist and supplies flavor for browning.
Cracker crumbs
Absorb liquid and help bind the mixture so the balls hold their shape.
Eggs
Set when heated, binding the meat and crumbs together into a cohesive ball.
Onion
Browns in the fat to add sweetness and savory depth to the curry sauce.
Flour
Thickens the curry sauce as it cooks with the fat and onion.

The step that matters

Browning the balls before simmering. Browning builds flavor through the Maillard reaction and helps the balls keep their shape during the long, gentle simmer that follows.

Swap the lemon

The recipe marks lemon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, pork, pepper, egg, cream, onion, flour):

  1. Avocadofits about as well
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Coconutfits less well
  4. Limefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, pork, pepper, egg, cream, 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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