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To Make a Good Forcemeat

A forcemeat made from veal, ham, bay leaf, basil, and fish, boiled and chilled.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Veal and ham are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,264 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

To Make a Good Forcemeat

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the forcemeat

  1. Chop the veal and ham together.

  2. Add the crumbled bay leaf and sweet basil.

  3. Roll the mixture into small balls.

Cook the balls

  1. Drop the balls into boiling water and cook for 7 minutes.

Assemble the mold

  1. Decorate a mold with the cooked balls and rings of lemon.

  2. Mix the strained cooking liquid with pounded fish.

  3. When nearly cold, pour the mixture into the mold.

  4. Optionally, add hard-boiled eggs.

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. Veal + hamtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,264 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Veal + basiltop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together345 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Ham + basiltop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together179 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Veal
Lean meat forms the main body of the forcemeat and holds the balls together when cooked.
Boiled ham
Adds savoury, cured flavour that stands out against the mild veal.
Bay leaf
Contributes a subtle herbal aroma to the meat as it cooks.
Sweet basil
Adds a fresh, aromatic herb note to the mixture.

The step that matters

Cook the balls for 7 minutes in boiling water. Lean meat toughens and dries out when overcooked, because its proteins tighten under prolonged heat. Timing the cook keeps the balls tender and juicy.

Swap the basil

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, ham):

  1. Celeryfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Basilthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, ham. 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.

More forcemeat recipes

Balls 27Fish 25Veal 24Chestnut 18Hare 17Suet 13 See all 56 →

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