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Boiled Meat Balls

A dish of ground steak, suet, onion, and bread formed into balls and boiled in water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 68,474 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Boiled Meat Balls

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meatballs

  1. Cut the round steak into pieces and grind it together with the suet and onion.

  2. Add salt, pepper, egg, and the soaked bread. Mix until firm.

  3. Shape the mixture into balls.

Boil and make gravy

  1. In a pot, add enough water to completely cover the meat balls.

  2. Bring the water to a boil, then add the meat balls.

  3. Boil until most of the water is gone, leaving a little for gravy. Thicken if desired.

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

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

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

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

  3. Onion + breadtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,676 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Pepper + eggtop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together50,580 recipes

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

Pepper and egg 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

Round steak
Provides the main meaty body and structure of the meatballs.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the meatballs moist and tender as they cook.
Egg
Binds the mixture so the meatballs hold their shape.
Bread
Soaked bread adds moisture and softness, helping keep the meatballs tender.

The step that matters

Boil until most of the water is gone, leaving a little for gravy. Boiling evaporates water and concentrates the cooking liquid, so stopping at the right point leaves enough liquid for gravy without making it watery. Thickening can help if the liquid stays thin.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, egg, bread. 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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