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Spinach Balls

Spinach balls made from finely chopped spinach, dry breadcrumbs, spices, and egg white, poached in soup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Spinach and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,400 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

Spinach Balls

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Combine finely chopped spinach and dry bread crumbs in a bowl.

  2. Season with pepper, coarse sea salt, and cayenne to taste.

  3. Add enough egg white to moisten the mixture and let it sit to stiffen.

Shape and poach

  1. Shape the mixture into balls the size of a hickory nut.

  2. Poach the balls in hot soup for five minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve three or four balls in each plate of clear soup.

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. Spinach + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  2. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

  3. Spinach + breadtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Bread + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

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

  5. Spinach + eggtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,323 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Spinach
Provides the bulk and green flavour of the balls and keeps them moist.
Dry bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and bind the spinach so the balls hold their shape.
Egg white
Sets when heated and binds the mixture together.

The step that matters

Adding the egg white. Too little egg white leaves the balls crumbly and they fall apart in the soup, while too much makes them wet and dense. Letting the mixture rest lets the crumbs absorb the moisture so it stiffens enough to shape.

Swap the spinach

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Asparagusfits about as well
  3. Spinachthe original
  4. Tomatofits about as well

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