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Cheese Balls

Cheese balls made from grated cheese, butter, bread crumbs, cream, mustard, salt, pepper, egg yolk, and optional raw egg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Cheese Balls

Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Cheese Balls

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mixture

  1. Combine grated cheese, butter, bread crumbs, cream, mustard, salt, and pepper in a mortar, then pound the mixture to a paste.

  2. Add the yolk of the hard-boiled egg and pound again.

  3. Adjust moisture with raw egg if needed.

Shape

  1. Flour your hands and a board.

  2. Shape the mixture into balls the size of marbles, then set the balls aside to firm up.

Cook

  1. Fry the balls after coating in egg and crumbs.

  2. Simmer in boiling stock for a few minutes.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

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

  2. Cheese + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,130 recipes

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

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  4. Cheese + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

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

  5. Cheese + mustardtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,805 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Cheese
Provides the main flavour and, as it cools and firms, helps the balls hold their shape.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a softer, smoother texture in the paste.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and give the paste body so it can be shaped.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, loosening the paste for pounding.
Hard-boiled egg yolk
Adds richness and helps bind the mixture into a smooth paste.

The step that matters

Adjust moisture with raw egg if needed. Too much liquid makes the balls soft and hard to shape, while too little leaves them crumbly. Raw egg adds binding protein that sets when heated, so add it in small amounts only as needed.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cheese, butter, bread, cream, mustard, egg, flour):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cheese, butter, bread, cream, mustard, egg, flour. 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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