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Forcemeat Balls

A savory meat mixture of veal and suet formed into balls and fried or boiled.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Forcemeat Balls

Why it works: Lemon and pepper 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 Balls

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mixture

  1. In a marble mortar or wooden bowl, beat the veal and suet together.

  2. Add the sweet herbs, mace, nutmeg, lemon peel, pepper, salt, and egg yolks; mix well.

Shape and cook

  1. Form the mixture into balls and long pieces.

  2. Roll the formed pieces in flour.

  3. Fry them in hot oil until browned, or boil in hot water for a few minutes if using in white sauce.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  4. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  5. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, 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 lean meat body that holds the meatball together.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the meatballs moist and tender as they cook.
Egg yolks
Bind the mixture so the meatballs hold their shape.
Flour
Dry coating that helps the outside brown when fried.

The step that matters

Frying in hot oil until browned. The oil must be hot enough to brown the flour-coated surface quickly. If it is too cool, the meatballs absorb grease, become heavy, and can fall apart before the outside sets.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, nutmeg, lemon, pepper, egg, flour):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, nutmeg, lemon, pepper, egg, flour. 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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