Meatball
↔ Varies by recipeA meatball is a small ball of minced meat mixed with bread, egg and seasonings that vary by place, then fried, boiled or stewed. Found in almost every cuisine, its name comes from Arabic and its history goes back to antiquity.
History
Pinning down a single origin is impossible, since balls of minced meat appear in very early sources. The Yale tablets, linked to the great banquet ordered by the Assyrian king Ashurnasirpal II when he moved his capital to Kalkhu, contain a recipe with minced meat, beaten egg, soaked bread, herbs and raisins, cooked in a sauce of walnuts and pomegranate molasses. They are the earliest documented meatballs, although the recipe may be older still.
In ancient Rome, the cookbook De re coquinaria includes several recipes for isicium, meatballs made with chicken, turkey or brains and seasoned with garum, as well as seafood versions with fish, oysters or squid. Such variety shows that minced meat was already a common way to make use of meat.
In the Middle Ages the meatball took root in Andalusi cooking and later in Sephardic kitchens. The historian Luis del Mármol describes fried meatballs of minced meat with spices in his Descripción general de África (1573). From the Iberian Peninsula, and above all through migration and trade, the dish spread to the Americas, where each country adapted it to local ingredients and habits.
Culture
In daily life the meatball is a simple, economical home dish, served on ordinary weekdays and at celebrations alike. Each region has its own version: in Argentina they are boiled, fried or baked; in Chile they are cooked in broth with rice; in Mexico they are stewed in tomato broth with chiles and eaten with tortillas; in Venezuela those from La Victoria, in Aragua state, are a well-known regional style; in Puerto Rico they fill the large sandwich called albondigazo. In Italy, polpette are served as a main course or in soup, and in the United States they are often paired with spaghetti. Today meatballs appear in restaurants, markets and home kitchens, and fish or vegetable versions also exist.
Legend and fact
It is traditionally said that Ziryab, a Kurdish-born musician and gastronome who lived at the Emirate of Córdoba under Abd al-Rahman II, invented the meatball in Spain. What is better documented is that he brought Eastern culinary customs to the peninsula, not that he created the dish, which already existed long before. Similarly, the Roman emperor Elagabalus is credited with a fish or squid meatball, an attribution that cannot be confirmed.