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Egg Balls for Soup

Egg balls made from boiled egg yolks, butter, pepper, salt, a raw egg, and flour, served in soup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Egg Balls for Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Rub the yolks of the hard-boiled eggs to a smooth paste with melted butter, pepper, and salt.

  2. Add the raw egg and beat until light.

  3. Mix in enough flour to hold the paste together.

  4. Form the mixture into balls using floured hands.

Cook and serve

  1. Set the balls in a cool place until just before serving your soup.

  2. Carefully add the balls to the boiling soup and cook for one minute.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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
Their yolks form the smooth base of the paste and add richness.
Raw egg
Binds the paste and adds structure so the balls hold together when cooked.
Melted butter
Adds fat and moisture, giving the paste a softer, richer texture.
Flour
Absorbs moisture and gives the paste enough body to hold its shape.

The step that matters

Adding the balls to the boiling soup. The raw egg in the balls sets as it heats, so dropping them into boiling soup and cooking briefly firms them while keeping them tender. Adding them too early or cooking them too long can make them tough or break them apart.

“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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