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Cottage Cheese Balls

Cottage cheese balls are formed from cottage cheese, mashed potatoes, and white sauce, then breaded and fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,305 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Cottage Cheese Balls

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mixture

  1. Make the white sauce.

  2. Gradually beat the cottage cheese into the white sauce.

  3. Add the mashed potatoes and season with salt and pepper.

  4. Form the mixture into soft balls.

Coat and fry

  1. Roll each ball in bread crumbs, then in the beaten egg, and again in bread crumbs.

  2. Fry in a kettle of deep fat 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. Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

  2. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  3. Cottage cheese + breadtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together72 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  4. Potato + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,355 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Cottage cheese + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together601 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Cottage cheese
Provides the bulk and soft, moist body of the balls.
Mashed potatoes
Adds starch and body, helping the balls hold their shape and stay soft inside.
Egg
Binds the crumb coating so it adheres during frying.
Flour
Thickens the white sauce, giving the mixture structure.
Bread crumbs
Forms a crisp, browned outer crust when fried.

The step that matters

Fry in a kettle of deep fat until golden brown. The balls are already soft and moist inside, so the fat must be hot enough to brown the crumb coating quickly. Oil that is too cool lets the coating absorb grease and fall apart before it crisps.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sauce, cottage cheese, flour, egg, pepper, bread):

  1. Spinachfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sauce, cottage cheese, flour, egg, pepper, 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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