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Meat Balls

A dish of fried meat balls made from cold meat, bread crumbs, onion, gravy, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and thyme are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,585 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Meat Balls

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a bowl, combine the chopped cold meat, bread or cracker crumbs, and chopped onion.

  2. Add enough gravy to moisten the mixture.

  3. Season with pepper, coarse sea salt, and thyme or savory.

  4. Form the mixture into balls and fry 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. Pepper + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Onion + thymetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Meat + breadtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,924 recipes

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

  5. Meat + thymetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,008 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold meat
Provides the main body and flavor of the meatballs.
Bread or cracker crumbs
Absorbs liquid and helps bind the mixture together.
Gravy
Moistens the mixture so the balls hold together and stay tender.
Onion
Adds aromatic flavor and some moisture to the mixture.

The step that matters

Form the mixture into balls and fry until golden brown. The mixture must be moist enough to hold its shape but not so wet that it falls apart. Frying over steady heat browns the surface through Maillard reactions, adding flavor and a crisp exterior.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, bread, pepper, thyme):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, bread, pepper, thyme. 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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