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To Make a Good Forcemeat

A dish of ground veal and ham formed into small balls, boiled, and served with lemon and optional eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Basil and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,823 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

To Make a Good Forcemeat

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the forced meat

  1. Chop the veal and ham together.

  2. Add the crumbled bay leaf and sweet basil.

  3. Roll the mixture into small balls.

Cook and set

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

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

  3. Mix the strained liquor with pounded fish.

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

  5. 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. Basil + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,823 recipes

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

  2. Ham + fishtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together125 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  3. Lemon + fishtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,889 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

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

  5. Ham + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,526 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Veal
Provides the main lean meat body that holds the forced meat together.
Boiled ham
Adds savoury flavour and a firmer, more cohesive texture to the meat mixture.
Strained liquor from cooked fish
Adds moisture and fish flavour to the mixture as it sets in the mold.

The step that matters

Pouring the mixture when nearly cold. If the mixture is poured while still hot, it can separate and set unevenly; letting it cool until nearly cold helps it hold together and set cleanly in the mold.

Swap the basil

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Basilthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, ham, lemon, egg, fish. 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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