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Force Meat Balls for Soup

Meatballs made from veal, pork, bread, cream, and spices, fried and added to soup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and summer savory work together. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 671 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Force Meat Balls for Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. In a bowl, combine grated bread, sweet cream, salt, pepper, summer savory, and beaten egg.

  2. Add finely chopped veal and pork, mixing well until smooth.

Shape and fry

  1. Form the mixture into round balls slightly larger than marbles.

  2. Roll each ball in egg, then in fine grated bread.

  3. Place the balls in a frying basket and fry in deep lard until golden.

Serve

  1. When the soup is ready, add a dozen or more meatballs to the tureen.

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 + summer savorytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together671 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Veal + porktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,930 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  3. Summer savory + porktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together239 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  4. Bread + porktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,371 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  5. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Grated bread
Absorbs moisture and gives the meatballs a light, tender body rather than a dense one.
Egg
Binds the mixture together so the balls hold their shape while cooking.
Sweet cream
Adds moisture and softness to the meat mixture.
Veal
Provides the mild, delicate meat base of the meatballs.
Pork
Adds fat and richness, keeping the meatballs juicy.

The step that matters

Fry in deep lard until golden. Frying at a steady heat browns the coated outside and sets the crust, so the balls keep their shape and do not absorb excess fat or fall apart in the soup.

Swap the summer savory

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, cream, pepper, egg, veal, pork):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Parsleyfits about as well
  3. Sagefits about as well
  4. Summer savorythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, cream, pepper, egg, veal, pork. 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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