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Potato Balls

A savory dish of bread, sweetbreads, mushrooms, and potatoes simmered in a butter‑wine sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 23 ingredients
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Potato Balls

Why it works: Nutmeg and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Potato Balls

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the bread case

  1. Order a two-pound loaf to be baked in an oval cake tin and let it be one day old.

  2. Cut off the top of the loaf and scoop out the crumb, leaving ¾ inch all around and at the bottom.

  3. Pare off the crust.

  4. Dip the loaf into ½ cup oiled butter.

  5. Bake the loaf in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 20 minutes.

  6. Redip the loaf in butter.

  7. Bake the loaf until pale bright brown.

Make the sweetbread stew

  1. Blanch the sweetbreads in boiling water for 5 minutes.

  2. Cut the sweetbreads into equal pieces.

  3. Soak the sweetbread pieces in cold water for 1 hour.

  4. Dry the sweetbreads.

  5. Dredge the sweetbreads with 2 teaspoons baked flour.

  6. Rub a bright stewpan with garlic.

  7. Add 2 ounces butter to the stewpan, then the sweetbreads, 1 teaspoon salt, ¼ teaspoon white pepper, grated nutmeg, lemon rind, parsley, bay leaf, mace, cloves, lemon juice, white wine and veal stock.

  8. Boil the stew quickly.

  9. Skim the stew.

  10. Simmer the stew gently for 45 minutes.

  11. Remove the sweetbreads from the stew.

  12. Skim the stew again.

  13. Strain the sauce.

Finish the sauce, mushrooms and potatoes

  1. Add beaten egg yolks to the sauce, then ½ cup thick cream.

  2. Boil the sauce for 2 minutes.

  3. Remove the skin from the mushrooms.

  4. Add the mushrooms to 1 pint boiling water with ¼ teaspoon salt and lemon juice.

  5. Boil the mushrooms for 12 minutes.

  6. Drain the mushrooms.

  7. Boil the potatoes.

  8. Add ¼ teaspoon salt and 1 ounce fresh butter to the potatoes.

  9. Mash the potatoes.

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. Nutmeg + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  3. Nutmeg + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

  4. Nutmeg + macetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Nutmeg + lemontop 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

Bread loaf
Forms the hollow case that holds the filling; stale bread holds its shape better when baked.
Butter
Adds richness and, when baked on the loaf, promotes golden browning.
Sweetbreads
Provide the tender, rich meat that forms the main filling.
Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce and give it a smooth, rich body.
Cream
Adds richness and a silky texture to the sauce.
Potatoes
Mashed to a soft, binding base with butter for the filling.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolks to the sauce. Egg yolks thicken when heated, but if the sauce is too hot they can scramble and curdle. Add them off the boil and stir steadily so the sauce stays smooth.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, butter, nutmeg, lemon, parsley, mace, clove):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, nutmeg, lemon, parsley, mace, clove. 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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