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Beef Balls

Beef balls made from boiled beef, onion, breadcrumbs, and spices, fried and served with gravy or fried breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon 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 ↓

Beef Balls

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. Chop the boiled beef and onion very finely.

  2. Season with salt, pepper, parsley, bread crumbs, lemon zest, and nutmeg.

  3. Moisten the mixture with the egg and mix well.

Shape and fry

  1. Roll the mixture into balls.

  2. Coat the balls in flour.

  3. Fry the balls in boiling lard or fresh dripping until golden brown.

Serve

  1. Serve with thickened brown gravy or fried bread crumbs.

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. Parsley + lemontop 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. Parsley + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

  5. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Egg
Binds the chopped mixture so the balls hold their shape when rolled and fried.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and add body, keeping the balls tender rather than dense.
Boiled beef
Provides the main body and savory flavor of the balls.
Onion
Adds moisture and savory flavor to the meat mixture.
Flour
Coating that helps the outside brown evenly when fried.

The step that matters

Fry in boiling lard or fresh dripping until golden brown. The fat must be hot enough to brown the flour coating quickly; if it is too cool, the balls absorb grease and turn soggy and pale before the outside sets.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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