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Beefsteak Balls

Beefsteak balls are small meatballs made from ground beef, egg yolk, salt, pepper, and shaped with flour or breadcrumbs, fried and served with sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,971 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Beefsteak Balls

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Scrape the beef steak with a sharp knife until only tough fibers remain.

  2. Place the scraped meat in a bowl and mix with the egg yolk, salt, and pepper.

Shape and fry

  1. Shape the mixture into balls about the size of a large walnut, using flour or bread crumbs if needed.

  2. Melt the butter in a frying pan over medium heat, then add the meatballs to the hot pan and fry until golden brown.

Serve

  1. Serve with a little thin brown sauce.

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. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Beef + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,847 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

Flour and butter 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

Beef steak
Provides the main body of the balls, and scraping leaves finely textured meat that holds together.
Egg yolk
Binds the scraped meat so the mixture holds its shape when formed into balls.
Butter
Fats the pan and adds richness and browning to the outside of the balls.

The step that matters

Shape the mixture into balls. The mixture is soft and loose, so it needs to be shaped gently and with flour or bread crumbs on the hands to keep it from sticking and falling apart before frying.

“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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