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Force Meat Balls for Soup

Meatballs made from veal and 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 meatballs

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

  2. Mix in finely chopped veal and pork until well combined.

  3. Form the mixture into smooth, round balls slightly larger than marbles.

Fry and serve

  1. Roll each ball in egg, then in grated bread.

  2. Fry the balls in deep lard until golden brown.

  3. Add a dozen meatballs to the soup before serving.

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

Veal
Provides the main meaty body and tender texture of the meatballs.
Pork
Adds fat and moisture, keeping the meatballs from drying out as they cook.
Egg
Binds the mixture together so the meatballs hold their shape.
Grated bread
Absorbs liquid and softens the mixture, adding tenderness and helping bind it.
Sweet cream
Adds moisture and richness, keeping the meatball mixture tender.

The step that matters

Frying in deep lard until golden brown. Frying at a steady, hot temperature browns the outside through the Maillard reaction, creating flavor and a crisp coating while the interior cooks through. Too low a heat makes the coating greasy and pale, and too high a heat can brown the outside before the center is cooked.

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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