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Soup

Egg Balls

Egg Balls are small, fried yolk-based spheres served in soup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Egg Balls

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dough

  1. Rub the egg yolks through a sieve.

  2. Add salt, cayenne, and butter; mix well.

  3. Moisten with raw egg yolk to achieve a handleable consistency.

Shape and cook

  1. Shape the mixture into small balls.

  2. Roll the balls in flour.

  3. Sauté the balls in butter until golden.

Serve

  1. Serve in brown soup stock, consommé, or mock turtle soup.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 main body of the balls, giving them a firm, crumbly structure when pressed through a sieve.
Raw egg yolk
Adds moisture and binding so the mixture holds together and can be shaped.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and browns the outside of the balls when sautéed.

The step that matters

Moisten with raw egg yolk. Too little raw yolk leaves the mixture crumbly and hard to shape, while too much makes it soft and sticky. Adding it gradually until the mixture is just handleable keeps the balls intact.

“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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