Why it works: Egg and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 106,462 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓
Egg Balls
Ingredients
Directions
Cook and cool the eggs
Boil the eggs for 10 to 12 minutes.
Place them in cold water until cool.
Shape the balls
Remove the yolks and mash them smoothly with the raw egg yolk.
Add salt and cayenne, then roll the mixture into marble-sized balls.
Finish
Boil the balls for 2 minutes.
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.
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Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together106,462 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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
- Eggs
- Provide the main body and structure of the mashed yolk mixture.
- Raw egg
- Binds the mashed yolks into a smooth, cohesive mixture that holds its shape.
The step that matters
Boil the eggs for 10 to 12 minutes. Too long makes yolks dry and chalky with a grey ring around them, while too short leaves them soft and runny, so they will not mash smoothly or roll into balls.
“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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