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Ham Balls with Cabbage Salad

Ham balls made from bread crumbs, milk, onion, parsley, pepper, mustard, egg yolks, and chopped ham, served with cabbage and green pepper salad.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Ham Balls with Cabbage Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mixture

  1. In a saucepan, cook the bread crumbs in milk with the onion and parsley until thick and smooth.

  2. Stir in pepper, mustard, egg yolks, and chopped ham. Mix thoroughly and let cool.

Shape and fry

  1. Shape the mixture into balls, then coat with egg and bread crumbs.

  2. Fry the balls in deep oil until golden brown. Drain on paper towels.

Serve

  1. Serve on a hot folded napkin on a cold plate, surrounded by sliced cabbage and green peppers mixed with boiled dressing.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

  3. Bread + hamtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  4. Parsley + mustardtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,588 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  5. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread crumbs
Thicken the milk into a smooth binding base for the balls.
Egg yolks
Bind the mixture and enrich its texture as it cools.
Cold boiled ham
Provides the main savory flavor and body of the balls.
Egg
Forms a coating that helps the crumbs stick and brown during frying.

The step that matters

Fry the balls in deep oil until golden brown. The mixture is soft and must be well chilled and fully coated before frying, or the balls may break apart. Frying at the right heat browns the coating quickly while the inside warms through.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, milk, parsley, pepper, mustard, egg, ham):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, milk, parsley, pepper, mustard, egg, ham. 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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