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Forcemeat for Fish

A forcemeat made from veal, suet, ham, oysters, cucumber, bread, seasonings, and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Forcemeat for Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Make the forcemeat

  1. Mince and pound the veal, suet, ham, oysters, cucumber, and grated bread into a paste.

  2. Season with pepper, coarse sea salt, grated lemon peel, and nutmeg.

  3. Bind the mixture with the beaten egg yolks.

Shape and cook

  1. Use it for stuffing or shape into balls or flat cakes.

  2. Fry the balls or cakes 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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Ham + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

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

  5. Cucumber + lemontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Lean veal
Forms the main body of the paste, giving the forcemeat its substance and texture.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the forcemeat moist and tender as it cooks.
Grated bread
Absorbs moisture and helps the mixture hold together as a paste.
Beaten egg yolks
Bind the mixture so it holds its shape when stuffed or formed into cakes.

The step that matters

Binding with egg yolks. Egg yolks set when heated and hold the paste together. Too few yolks or overworking can leave the mixture crumbly or loose, so the balls or cakes may fall apart in the pan.

Swap the cucumber

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, ham, oyster, bread, pepper, lemon, nutmeg):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Cucumberthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, ham, oyster, bread, pepper, lemon, nutmeg. 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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