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Meat Balls

A dish of mashed potato and minced meat balls coated in egg and breadcrumbs, fried in hot lard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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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 ↓

Meat Balls

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mixture

  1. Mash the potatoes finely and pass them through a sieve.

  2. Stir in the egg yolks, butter, pepper, and salt.

  3. Mince the beef or tongue finely and mix it with the potato mixture. Add chopped parsley and mix well.

  4. Roll the mixture into balls.

Coat and fry

  1. Coat each ball with beaten egg and then with bread crumbs.

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

  3. Let them dry on paper 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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Potato + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,855 recipes

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

  3. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  4. Potato + beeftop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,052 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  5. Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Provide starchy bulk that keeps the meatballs tender and moist inside.
Egg yolks
Bind the mixture and add richness to hold the balls together.
Butter
Adds fat for richer flavor and a softer, more tender interior.
Finely minced beef or tongue
Forms the main meaty body of the meatballs.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp outer crust that browns when fried.

The step that matters

Fry in hot lard until golden brown. The fat must be hot enough to brown the crumb coating quickly; if it is too cool, the coating absorbs excess fat and turns greasy before the inside is cooked through.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Potatothe original
  2. Chivefits about as well
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Carrotfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, butter, pepper, beef, parsley, bread. 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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