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Egg Balls

Egg Balls are small, cherry-sized spheres made from mashed potato, egg yolks, parsley, and spices, served in boiling soup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Egg Balls

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mixture

  1. Mash the yolks of the hard boiled eggs with the hot boiled potato.

  2. Add the chopped parsley, cayenne pepper, and coarse sea salt to taste.

  3. Mix in the raw egg yolk.

Shape and serve

  1. Flour your hands and mold the mixture into balls the size of cherries.

  2. Drop the balls into boiling 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.

  1. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Potato + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,855 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

  4. Egg + parsleytop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,765 recipes

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

  5. Egg + potatotop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,978 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Hard boiled egg yolks
Provide rich, crumbly body and flavor to the mixture.
Potato
Adds bulk and moisture, helping the mixture hold together when shaped.
Raw egg yolk
Binds the mixture so the balls keep their shape.

The step that matters

Dropping the balls into soup just before serving. The balls are delicate and can break apart or turn dense if they sit too long in hot liquid. Adding them at the last moment keeps them intact and tender.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Potatothe original

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