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Forcemeat Balls Fob Fish Soups

Forcemeat balls made from lobster, anchovy, celery, egg yolk, and seasonings, fried and served in fish soup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Lobster and anchovy work together. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 470 recipes. Both carry octanal, which smells fat, soap. The science ↓

Forcemeat Balls Fob Fish Soups

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. Remove the meat from the lobster shell and pound it in a mortar with the soft parts.

  2. Add the boiled celery, hard-boiled egg yolk, seasonings, and bread crumbs, and continue pounding until well combined.

  3. Melt the butter until liquid, then whisk the eggs and mix them with the lobster mixture.

Shape and fry

  1. Form the mixture into balls about 1 inch in diameter.

  2. Fry the balls until they are a nice pale 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. Lobster + anchovytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together470 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Anchovy + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,260 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanol (green, fruity).

  4. Anchovy + eggtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,330 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Anchovy + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,697 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Lobster
Provides the main body of the meatballs and their sweet, delicate flavor.
Eggs
Bind the mixture together and help it set firm when cooked.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and give the balls a softer, more tender texture.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the balls brown during frying.
Hard-boiled egg yolk
Adds richness and a smooth, creamy texture to the mixture.

The step that matters

Frying until pale brown. Frying over too high heat can brown the outside before the centre is cooked through, while too low a heat leaves the balls greasy and loose. Gentle, steady heat lets the eggs set and the surface colour evenly.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lobster, anchovy, celery, egg, bread, butter):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, anchovy, celery, egg, bread, butter. 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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