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Savoury Potato Balls

Savoury potato balls made with mashed potatoes, grated ham, eschalot, parsley, spices, egg yolk, and bread crumbs, fried until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Savoury Potato Balls

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. In a bowl, combine the mashed potatoes, grated ham, minced eschalot, minced parsley, salt, pepper, and nutmeg.

  2. Mould the mixture into balls.

  3. Dip each ball in egg yolk, then coat with fine bread-crumbs.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry the balls in butter until golden brown.

  2. Serve the balls heaped on a napkin.

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. Parsley + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Mashed potatoes
Form the bulk of the ball and give it a soft, moist interior.
Grated ham
Adds salty, savoury flavour throughout the balls.
Egg yolk
Acts as a binder for the coating and helps the crumbs stick.
Fine bread-crumbs
Form a crisp outer layer that browns when fried.
Butter
Conducts heat for frying and adds richness and browning to the crust.

The step that matters

Coating the balls evenly. The egg yolk must fully cover each ball so the bread-crumbs adhere. Gaps let the soft potato break open or absorb too much fat during frying, so the crust turns out patchy rather than crisp.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Carrotfits about as well
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, parsley, pepper, nutmeg, egg, bread, butter. 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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