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Egg Balls to Serve in Soup

Egg balls are small, molded mixtures of mashed hard‑boiled egg yolks, salt, pepper, butter, and raw yolk, cooked by poaching or sautéing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 118,967 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Egg Balls to Serve in Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the balls

  1. Mash the cooked yolks of the hard-boiled eggs through a sieve.

  2. Season with salt, pepper, melted butter, and enough raw egg yolk to form a moldable mixture.

  3. Mold the mixture into small balls.

Cook

  1. Poach the balls in hot water.

  2. Alternatively, dip them in egg white and flour.

  3. Sauté in butter for about 3 minutes until cooked.

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. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

  3. Egg + peppertop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together50,580 recipes

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

Egg and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 50,580 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

Hard-boiled eggs
Provide the main body of the balls, with the mashed yolks forming a soft, rich filling.
Raw egg yolk
Binds the mashed yolks so the mixture holds together when molded.
Butter
Adds richness and flavor, and browns lightly when the balls are sautéed.

The step that matters

Mold the mixture into balls. The mixture must be firm enough to hold its shape but not stiff; adding raw yolk gradually lets you control binding without making the balls dense or crumbly.

“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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