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Cheese and Nut Balls

A mixture of mild cheese, salt, paprika, cream or oil, and walnuts formed into balls and chilled.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Cheese and walnut work together. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 410 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Cheese and Nut Balls

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mixture

  1. Pass the mild cheese through a meat chopper using a fine cutter.

  2. Add ¼ teaspoon of coarse sea salt and season with paprika or cayenne to taste.

  3. Incorporate enough rich cream, olive oil, or creamed butter to mold the mixture into balls.

  4. Mix in ⅓ cup of finely chopped walnuts or hickory nuts.

Shape and serve

  1. Form the mixture into balls slightly larger than marbles.

  2. Chill thoroughly and serve with any kind of salad.

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. Cheese + walnuttop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together410 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  2. Cheese + creamtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,655 recipes

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

  3. Cream + walnuttop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,982 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

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

What each ingredient does

Mild cheese
Provides the main body and rich, savory flavor of the balls.
Rich cream, olive oil, or creamed butter
Adds moisture and fat so the mixture binds and holds its shape.
English walnuts or hickory nuts
Adds crunch and a nutty flavor that contrasts with the soft cheese.

The step that matters

Incorporate enough rich cream, olive oil, or creamed butter to mold the mixture into balls.. Too little fat leaves the cheese crumbly and unable to hold a shape, while too much makes it soft and greasy. Add the binder gradually until the mixture just holds together when pressed.

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cheese, cream):

  1. Walnutthe original
  2. Beansfits about as well
  3. Pistachiofits about as well
  4. Almondfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against cheese, cream. 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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