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Egg Balls

Egg balls are boiled eggs shaped into balls, rolled in flour, and fried or cooked in soup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour 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

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the yolks

  1. Boil the eggs for 20 minutes.

  2. Transfer the eggs to cold water until cool.

  3. Remove the shells from the eggs.

  4. Carefully cut the whites from the eggs.

  5. Remove the yolks whole.

  6. Cut the yolks into quarters.

  7. Rub the yolks into a smooth paste.

Shape and cook

  1. Mix the yolks with melted butter, salt, and pepper.

  2. Moisten the mixture with enough beaten egg white or yolk to shape easily.

  3. Shape the mixture into balls about the size of a nutmeg.

  4. Roll the balls in flour.

  5. Fry the balls in butter until brown.

  6. Drop the balls into hot soup and cook for 5 minutes.

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. Butter + flourtop 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. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

Butter and flour 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

Eggs
The yolks provide the bulk and rich, creamy body of the balls.
Melted butter
Adds fat and moisture, keeping the yolk mixture soft and smooth.
Raw egg white or yolk
Acts as a binder that holds the mixture together when shaped.
Flour
Forms a dry coating that helps the balls brown evenly when fried.

The step that matters

Rub the yolks into a smooth paste. Any lumps or unbroken yolk pieces will make the mixture crumble when shaped and give an uneven texture. Rubbing the yolks through fully breaks them down so the mixture binds evenly.

“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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