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Corned-beef Balls

A fried ball made from chopped corned beef, mashed potatoes, onion juice, mustard, cayenne pepper, breadcrumbs, and egg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,023 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Corned-beef Balls

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. Chop the corned beef as fine as meal.

  2. Mix the chopped beef with hot mashed potatoes thoroughly.

  3. Season with onion juice, mustard, cayenne, and salt if needed.

Shape and coat

  1. Shape the mixture into balls.

  2. Roll each ball in breadcrumbs, then dip in beaten egg, and roll in breadcrumbs again.

Fry

  1. Fry the balls in hot oil 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.

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. Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  2. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

  3. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  4. Potato + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,340 recipes

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

  5. Beef + potatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,052 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

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

What each ingredient does

Corned beef
Provides the main meaty flavor and the bulk of the filling.
Mashed potatoes
Adds moisture and binds the chopped beef into a shapeable mixture.
Egg
Binds the breadcrumb coating so it adheres during frying.
Breadcrumbs
Form a crisp, golden browned crust when fried.

The step that matters

Shaping and coating the balls. Chopping the beef finely and mixing it thoroughly with the potatoes helps the balls hold together. A firm, evenly coated shell keeps the filling from breaking apart and absorbing too much oil during frying.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, potato, onion, pepper, egg):

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, potato, onion, pepper, egg. 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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