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Cheese Balls

Cheese balls made with grated cheese, walnuts, egg, cream, and seasonings, rolled and coated with parsley, served with crackers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Cheese Balls

Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Cheese Balls

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mixture

  1. In a bowl, combine grated cheese, chopped walnuts, and egg.

  2. Add enough cream to achieve a moldable consistency.

  3. Season with red pepper and coarse sea salt to taste.

Shape and serve

  1. Roll the mixture into balls using your hands.

  2. Coat each ball in finely chopped parsley.

  3. Serve as the last course with crackers.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Walnut + parsleytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together865 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Walnut + peppertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,039 recipes

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

  4. Cheese + walnuttop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together410 recipes

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

  5. Cheese + creamtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,655 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Grated cheese
Provides the main body, richness and savoury flavour of the balls.
Chopped walnuts
Add texture and crunch against the soft cheese.
Egg
Binds the cheese and walnuts so the mixture holds together.
Cream
Adds moisture and softness so the mixture can be shaped.

The step that matters

Adding the cream. Cream should be added gradually, since too much makes the mixture soft and hard to shape, while too little leaves it crumbly and dry.

“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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