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Omelettes Boulettes

Small beef meatballs made with breadcrumbs, spices, lemon rind, and parsley, served with white sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Omelettes Boulettes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meatballs

  1. Pass the beef steak through a meat grinder two or three times.

  2. Mix the ground beef with breadcrumbs, egg, suet, spices, lemon rind, and parsley.

  3. Form the mixture into small balls.

Poach and serve

  1. Poach the balls in simmering water for 20 minutes.

  2. Serve covered with white sauce and garnish with parsley.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

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

  5. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef steak
Provides the main meaty body of the meatballs once ground.
Breadcrumbs
Soaked in milk, they hold moisture and keep the meatballs tender rather than dense.
Egg
Binds the ground meat and breadcrumbs so the balls hold their shape.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the meatballs moist and rich during poaching.

The step that matters

Poach at a simmer. Water that boils hard can break the balls apart and toughen the proteins. Keeping the water at a gentle simmer for the full 20 minutes lets the meatballs cook through while staying tender and intact.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, milk, egg, nutmeg, pepper, lemon, parsley):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, milk, egg, nutmeg, pepper, lemon, parsley. 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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