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Dessert

Cheese Balls

Cheese balls are small fried balls made from cream cheese, egg whites, flour, cayenne pepper, and salt, coated in breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Cheese Balls

Why it works: Egg and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 22,662 recipes. Both carry (e)-2-octenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Cheese Balls

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mixture

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff.

  2. Mix the flour with the cream cheese.

  3. Fold in the beaten egg whites, cayenne pepper, and salt.

Shape and fry

  1. Shape the mixture into small balls.

  2. Roll the balls in sifted bread crumbs.

  3. Fry the balls in hot lard until golden brown.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Pepper + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

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

  4. Cream cheese + breadtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together166 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 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

Egg whites
Beaten until stiff, they trap air and lighten the mixture so the balls stay airy.
Cream cheese
Provides the rich, creamy body that forms the base of the balls.
Flour
Adds body to the cream cheese so the mixture holds its shape when formed.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, browning coating that protects the inside during frying.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg whites. Folding gently keeps the air bubbles in the whipped whites. Stirring vigorously deflates them, leaving dense rather than light balls.

“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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