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Egg Balls

Egg Balls are small, boiled egg-based spheres seasoned with salt, pepper, flour or starch, parsley, and a raw yolk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley 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

Prepare the yolks

  1. Boil the eggs for 10-12 minutes, then place them in cold water.

  2. Once cold, remove the yolks and place them in a bowl.

Shape the balls

  1. Add salt, pepper, flour or potato starch, chopped parsley, and the raw egg yolk to the yolks.

  2. Mix well and roll the mixture into small balls.

Cook and serve

  1. Boil the balls in soup for 2 minutes before serving.

  2. If using for a pie, add them raw directly into the pie.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Eggs
Provide the main body of the balls, with the yolks forming a rich, crumbly base.
Raw egg yolk
Binds the mashed yolks together so the mixture holds its shape when rolled.
Flour or potato starch
Absorbs moisture and helps the mixture hold together during shaping and boiling.

The step that matters

Rolling and boiling the balls. The mixture is soft and can fall apart if it is not mixed well and rolled firmly. Boiling only briefly in soup keeps the raw egg yolk set on the inside without making the balls tough.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Turmericfits about as well
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Nutmegfits about as well
  4. Jalapenofits about as well

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