Skip to main content
Main

Cheese Balls

Cheese balls are small, fried balls made from a mixture of milk, butter, flour, and grated Edam cheese, seasoned with pepper and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Cheese Balls

Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Cheese Balls

Ingredients

Directions

Make the cheese base

  1. Scald the milk in a saucepan.

  2. Mix the flour into the hot butter until smooth.

  3. Add the grated cheese to the milk. Stir until dissolved.

  4. Combine the cheese mixture with the butter.

  5. Season with pepper and salt. Stir until thick and smooth.

  6. Pour onto a platter and refrigerate until stone cold.

Shape and fry

  1. Roll the mixture into small balls the size of English walnuts.

  2. Dip each ball in egg and coat with bread crumbs.

  3. Fry the balls in hot lard until golden brown.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + cheesetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Milk + cheesetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,426 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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

Flour
Thickens the butter and milk mixture so the cheese base becomes firm enough to roll.
Edam cheese
Provides the main cheese flavor and, once chilled, the body that holds the balls together.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the flour form a smooth roux with the milk.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the flour thickens into a smooth, creamy mixture.

The step that matters

Refrigerate until stone cold before shaping. A warm or soft mixture stays sticky and cannot be rolled cleanly. Chilling lets the starch and fat set, so the balls hold their shape during frying.

“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.

More cheese balls recipes

with Tomato Sauce 4Cottage 3Fried 3 See all 102 →

You might also like

Macaroni and CheeseMacaroni and Cheese102 recipesCheese MakingCheese Making50 recipesCheese FrittersCheese Fritters34 recipesCheese OmeletteCheese Omelette31 recipes