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Cheese Balls with Tomato Sattce

Cheese balls made with grated cheese, stale bread, egg, and spices, fried and served with tomato sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Cheese and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,130 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Cheese Balls with Tomato Sattce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. In a bowl, mix together the grated cheese, coarse sea salt, cayenne pepper, and crumbled stale bread.

  2. Add the egg and Worcestershire sauce, and mix until combined.

Shape and fry

  1. Form the mixture into small balls and roll them in cracker crumbs.

  2. Fry the balls in deep fat until golden brown.

Serve

  1. Serve on triangles of buttered toast and pour tomato sauce over them.

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

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

  2. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  3. Bread + tomatotop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,013 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Cheese + tomatotop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,896 recipes

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

  5. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Grated cheese
Provides the main flavor and, when melted, binds the balls with richness.
Egg
Binds the mixture so the balls hold their shape while frying.
Crumbled stale bread
Absorbs moisture and adds body so the balls stay tender inside.
Cracker crumbs
Forms a crisp, browned outer coating during frying.

The step that matters

Frying the balls until golden brown. Deep frying at the right heat browns the crumb coating quickly, so the cheese inside melts without the outside burning or the balls absorbing excess oil.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cheese, pepper, bread, egg, sauce):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Tomatothe original
  3. Mustardfits about as well
  4. Asparagusfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against cheese, pepper, bread, egg, sauce. 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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