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Cheese Balls

Cheese balls are small, fried balls made from grated Swiss cheese mixed with egg whites, salt, pepper, and red pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Cheese Balls

Why it works: Swiss cheese and egg work together. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 405 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Cheese Balls

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. Beat the egg whites until very stiff.

  2. Add the grated cheese, salt, pepper, and red pepper to the egg whites.

  3. Form the mixture into small balls, no larger than a walnut.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat the lard until very hot.

  2. Drop the cheese balls into the hot lard and cook until brown.

  3. Serve very hot.

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. Swiss cheese + eggtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together405 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  2. Swiss cheese + peppertop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together448 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  3. Egg + peppertop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together50,580 recipes

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

Egg and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 50,580 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

Egg whites
Whipped to stiff foam, they give the cheese balls a light, airy structure.
Swiss cheese
Provides rich flavor and melts slightly, adding savory richness to the balls.
Lard
Frying fat that transfers heat quickly, browning the outside of the balls.

The step that matters

Drop the cheese balls into the hot lard. If the lard is not very hot, the balls absorb more fat and cook unevenly before browning. Very hot fat sets the outside quickly, keeping the inside light and the surface crisp.

“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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