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Pea Balls

Pea Balls are small, fried balls made from boiled peas, butter, flour, cream, sugar, eggs, and coated in cracker crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Pea Balls

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pea base

  1. Drain the liquor from the can of peas.

  2. Boil the peas in salted water until tender.

  3. Drain the peas.

  4. Rub the peas through a colander.

  5. Rub the butter into the flour.

  6. Mix the butter-flour into the pea pulp.

  7. Stir in the cream, sugar, beaten eggs, salt, and pepper.

  8. Pour the mixture into a double boiler.

  9. Place the double boiler on the stove.

  10. Stir the mixture until it boils.

  11. Cool the mixture.

Shape and coat

  1. Roll the mixture into small balls between floured hands.

  2. Beat 2 eggs.

  3. Dip the balls into the beaten eggs.

  4. Roll the balls in cracker crumbs.

  5. Set the balls aside in a cool place for 1 hour.

Fry

  1. Fry the balls in deep hot oil 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.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  2. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Peas + peppertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,331 recipes

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

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

Peas
Form the main body of the balls, giving bulk and a soft, starchy texture.
Flour
Thickens the pea pulp so the mixture holds its shape when cooled and rolled.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavour and softens the mixture.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, giving the mixture a smoother, more tender set.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and, beaten, form the coating that helps crumbs adhere.

The step that matters

Cool the mixture before shaping. A warm, loose mixture will not hold its shape when rolled. Cooling lets the starch in the flour and pea pulp set, so the balls stay firm enough to coat and fry without falling apart.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Pistachiofits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, cream, sugar, 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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