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Beef Balls

A fried ball made from cold corned beef, broth, onion, butter, flour, eggs, and coated with beaten egg and crackers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,092 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Beef Balls

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Combine broth and chopped onion in a saucepan; after stewing, strain out the onion.

  2. Add butter and flour to the broth, stirring until smooth.

  3. Stir in beaten eggs and minced beef; season with pepper.

  4. Heat mixture until hot, then let it cool and stiffen.

Shape and fry

  1. Form into balls about 1.5 inches in diameter.

  2. Roll balls in beaten egg, then in pounded crackers.

  3. Fry in boiling oil until golden brown; drain before serving.

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. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Beef + meattop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,533 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Corned beef
Provides the main meat flavor and the bulk of the meatballs.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and set when heated, holding the balls together.
Flour
Thickens the broth so the mixture holds its shape.
Broth
Adds moisture and savory flavor to the meat mixture.
Crackers
Form a crisp, browned coating when fried.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool and stiffen before shaping. Heating sets the egg and flour so the mixture firms up. If shaped while still warm and soft, the balls can fall apart in the hot oil.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, meat, butter, flour, egg, pepper):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, meat, butter, flour, egg, pepper. 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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