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Egg Balls

Small balls of beaten egg mixture, seasoned and cooked in boiling water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 mixture

  1. Powder the egg yolks and mix in the raw yolk.

  2. Add pepper, salt, nutmeg, parsley, and savoury herbs.

Shape and cook

  1. Roll into small balls, dust with flour, and drop into boiling water until set.

Cheaper version

  1. For a cheaper version, beat one egg and mix in parsley, pepper, salt, and nutmeg.

  2. Add breadcrumbs to the egg mixture to form a soft dough.

  3. Roll into marble-sized balls, dust with flour, and cook in boiling water.

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. Nutmeg + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Parsley + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Bind the mixture and add richness and a tender, set texture when cooked.
Breadcrumbs
Absorb moisture from the beaten egg to form a soft dough that holds its shape.
Egg
Binds the mixture and sets when cooked, holding the balls together in the cheaper version.

The step that matters

Cooking in boiling water until set. Egg proteins set with heat, so the balls need enough time in gently boiling water to firm through. Dropping them into water that is too vigorous can break them apart, while undercooking leaves the centre soft and loose.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Cinnamonfits about as well
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Marjoramfits about as well
  4. Allspicefits about as well

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