Why it works: Egg and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 106,462 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓
Egg Balls
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the dough
Pound the hard-boiled yolks of the eggs until perfectly smooth in a bowl.
Beat the raw yolks in a separate bowl.
Add the beaten yolks, flour, and salt to the smooth cooked yolks.
Mix all ingredients together and roll into balls the size of hickory nuts.
Cook
Bring a saucepan of salted water to a boil.
Drop the balls into the boiling water and cook until firm, about 5 minutes.
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.
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Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together106,462 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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
- Form the main body of the balls and give a soft, crumbly texture.
- Raw egg yolks
- Bind the mixture and help it hold together when cooked.
- Flour
- Adds body so the mixture holds its shape and firms up.
The step that matters
Drop the balls into the boiling water and cook until firm. Egg proteins in the raw yolks set as they heat. Cooking too long or at too hard a boil can make the balls tough or cause them to break apart, so watch for firmness rather than only the clock.
“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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