Skip to main content
Soup

Consomme with Egg Balls

A clear soup of consommé served with small balls made from hard-boiled egg yolks bound with raw egg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and parsley 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 ↓

Consomme with Egg Balls

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the consommé

  1. Boil 1 quart of plain consommé with 1 quart of boiling water.

Make the egg balls

  1. In a bowl, mix the yolks of 2 hard-boiled eggs with salt, pepper, melted butter, and parsley.

  2. Add just enough slightly beaten raw egg to bind the mixture.

  3. Mold the mixture into small marble-sized balls.

Serve

  1. Just before serving, add the egg balls to the boiling consommé.

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

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

  2. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  3. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Egg + parsleytop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,765 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Hard-boiled egg yolks
Provide the rich, crumbly body that forms the bulk of each egg ball.
Raw egg
Binds the yolk mixture so the balls hold their shape in the broth.
Melted butter
Adds fat for smoothness and a rounder, richer mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Add the egg balls just before serving. Raw egg in the balls sets as it heats, so prolonged boiling can toughen them and make them rubbery. Adding them at the end keeps them tender and the broth clear.

“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.

You might also like

Indian Spiced Potato Soup with Tofu and SpinachIndian Spiced Potato Soup with Tofu and Spinach448 recipesClear Carrot and Bottle Gourd SoupClear Carrot and Bottle Gourd Soup65 recipesMock Bisque SoupMock Bisque Soup51 recipesCream of Asparagus SoupCream of Asparagus Soup42 recipes