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To Make Force-meat for an Artificial Turtle

A seasoned veal mixture with anchovies, spices, and Madeira wine formed into balls and stewed.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and marjoram match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,979 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

To Make Force-meat for an Artificial Turtle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the forcemeat

  1. In a marble mortar, finely beat the fat and lean veal with the anchovies.

  2. Season the mixture with mace, salt, parsley, sweet marjoram, lemon juice, and Madeira wine.

  3. Mix well and form into small balls.

  4. Dust the balls with fine flour.

Finish

  1. Add the balls to your dish and stew for about 30 minutes before serving.

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. Parsley + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,979 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  3. Marjoram + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together957 recipes

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

  4. Marjoram + flourtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,265 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Mace + marjoramtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together767 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

Veal fat
Adds richness and moisture, keeping the forcemeat tender as it cooks.
Lean veal
Forms the main body of the forcemeat, giving it structure once shaped and cooked.
Anchovies
Contribute savory depth that rounds out the flavor of the veal.
Madeira wine
Adds aromatic sweetness and acidity that brightens the rich meat.

The step that matters

Forming and dusting the balls. The balls need to be evenly shaped and lightly floured so they hold together and keep their shape during stewing instead of breaking apart in the liquid.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, parsley, marjoram, lemon, madeira wine, flour):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Sagefits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, parsley, marjoram, lemon, madeira wine, 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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