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Egg Balls

A mixture of egg yolks, flour, salt, and other ingredients formed into balls, boiled or fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,012 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Egg Balls

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the egg mixture

  1. Pound the yolks of hard-boiled eggs in a mortar with a little flour and salt.

  2. Add enough raw egg yolk to form the mixture into balls.

Season and shape

  1. Beat lobster flesh with an anchovy, hard egg yolk, and boiled celery until pulpy.

  2. Mix in bread crumbs, cayenne, mace, salt, beaten eggs, catchup, butter, and oyster liquor.

  3. Form into balls and fry in butter until golden brown.

Serve

  1. Boil the balls before adding them to soups or other dishes.

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. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 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. Anchovy + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,260 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanol (green, fruity).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + anchovytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,330 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

Hard-boiled egg yolks
Give the balls a rich, crumbly base that holds the mixture together.
Raw egg yolk
Binds the mixture so it can be formed into balls.
Beaten eggs
Add structure as they set, helping the balls hold their shape.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and add body to the mixture.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and promotes browning when frying.

The step that matters

Fry in butter until golden brown. Frying over steady heat browns the outside through the Maillard reaction while the interior sets. Too much heat can scorch the butter and burn the outside before the centre is heated through.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, flour, butter, anchovy, celery, bread, 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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