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Potato Balls

Potato balls are small fried potato dumplings seasoned with milk, eggs, parsley, and breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Potato Balls

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 ↓

Potato Balls

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mixture

  1. Boil and mash the potatoes smoothly.

  2. Add the seasoning, one beaten egg, and the milk.

  3. Flour your hands and shape the mixture into small balls.

Coat and fry

  1. Brush the balls with egg.

  2. Cover the balls with bread crumbs.

  3. Fry the balls in hot fat for about two minutes until pale brown.

  4. Drain the balls on paper.

Serve

  1. Place a small piece of parsley stalk in each ball.

  2. Serve the balls on a hot dish garnished 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.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Potato + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,855 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  5. Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 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

Potatoes
Form the soft, bindable body of the balls.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and, brushed on, help the crumbs stick.
Butter
Adds richness and a softer, moister texture to the mash.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden-brown coating when fried.

The step that matters

Fry the balls in hot fat. The fat must be hot enough to brown the crumb coating quickly. If it is too cool, the balls absorb more oil and turn greasy before the coating crisps, and if the coating is left too long it can darken before the centre warms through.

Swap the parsley

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, milk, butter, egg, pepper, bread. 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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