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Soup Balls

Soup balls made from corn flour, milk, butter, egg, breadcrumbs, parsley, salt, and pepper, poached and served as a garnish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Soup Balls

Ingredients

Directions

Make the paste

  1. Blend the corn flour with the milk.

  2. In a saucepan, heat the mixture with the butter until it boils, stirring constantly for 5 minutes.

  3. Remove from heat and let it cool slightly.

  4. Add the egg and enough bread crumbs to form a stiff paste.

  5. Season with salt, pepper, and add the chopped parsley.

Shape and poach

  1. Form small balls with a spoon.

  2. Poach the balls in boiling water or stock for 3 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve as a garnish in soup.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Corn + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  5. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Corn flour
Thickens the milk into a paste that holds the balls together.
Egg
Binds the mixture and helps the balls set when poached.
Butter
Adds richness and smooth texture to the cooked paste.
Bread crumbs
Stiffens the paste so it can be shaped into balls.

The step that matters

Stirring the corn flour mixture while it boils. Corn flour thickens as its starch swells in boiling liquid. Constant stirring prevents lumps and scorching on the base of the pan, giving a smooth, even paste.

Swap the parsley

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against corn, flour, milk, butter, bread, egg, 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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