Meatball
A meatball is a type of comestible created by zapping a spell of stone to flesh at rocks, valuable gems, gray stones, and statues of non-fleshy monsters. (Pieces of glass are not affected and do not turn into meatballs.)
Meatballs have very little nutritional value, but carnivorous creatures treat them just like tripe rations. Throwing one at a cat or dog will tame it, and they can be fed to carnivorous pets to increase their tameness and apport.
Strategy
Since the spellbook of stone to flesh is a rare find and isn't particularly easy to cast, it's not easy to create meatballs unless you are a Healer. However, once you do have the spell, it is easy to get hundreds of meatballs out of a single casting. All you need to do is gather lots of rocks (easily obtained via smashing boulders and statues) in one place, and then cast the spell at them.
Besides eating them, the most direct use of meatballs is to feed them to your carnivorous pets to increase their tameness (important if you plan on using a polymorph trap to turn it into a non-eating pet), or to increase apport to train them for stealing from shops. They are also useful in a pinch for taming a hostile cat or dog.
Polypiling a large quantity of meatballs is likely to cause a flesh golem to form. If you have a magical means of taming, you may want to create a golem deliberately so that you can tame it. The golem is unlikely to resist taming and is a useful pet to have for lower levels. You can then upgrade it into a more powerful stone golem by hitting it with a cockatrice corpse.
Polypiling meatballs is also useful if you don't want to create a golem: they make excellent comestible polyfodder since they can usually be obtained in large quantities, are lightweight, and can polymorph into any randomly generated comestible, including lembas wafers, tins of spinach and tengu meat, cockatrice eggs, and other uncommon comestibles. Note, however, that getting eggs or tins of a specific monster type will likely require a lot of polypiling and great numbers of meatballs.
If you're really strapped for cash, you can turn worthless rocks into meatballs and sell them at a general store or delicatessen. Or better yet, polypile the meatballs into food that will sell for more money.
Encyclopedia entry
Interestingly, meatball shares its entry with the huge chunk of meat:
Some hae meat and canna eat,
And some would eat that want it;
But we hae meat, and we can eat,
Sae let the Lord be thankit.
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