Name: Force Meat Balls for Black Bean Soup
Ingredients: cold meat, chopped very fine; flour, enough to bind; additional flour for rolling

Why it works: Meat and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 28% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,529 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Force Meat Balls for Black Bean Soup

Ingredients

cold meat, chopped very fine
flour, enough to bind
additional flour for rolling

Directions

Chop the cold meat very fine.
Add enough flour to make the mixture stick together in balls about the size of a walnut.
Roll the meatballs in flour.
Fry the meatballs until brown.
Add the meatballs to the soup just before serving.

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.

Meat + flourtop 28% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together5,529 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Meat Croquettes52 recipes

Meatballs37 recipes

Mince Meat37 recipes

Meat Cakes35 recipes

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Force Meat Balls for Black Bean Soup