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Forcemeat Balls for Made Dishes

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Parsley and shallot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,737 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Forcemeat Balls for Made Dishes

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Parboil and mince the liver, then set aside.

  2. In a stew pan, moisten the bread crumbs with milk and warm them.

  3. Mix the soaked bread crumbs with parsley and shallot, then pound into a smooth paste.

  4. Rub the mixture through a sieve and let it cool.

  5. Combine the cooled mixture with veal, udder, and hard boiled egg yolks.

  6. Season with salt, pepper, and curry powder, then add raw egg yolks and mix well.

  7. Form the mixture into small balls.

  8. Fry or boil the balls in soup or any other dish.

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 + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  4. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  5. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

Swap the shallot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, butter, bread, milk, parsley, egg, pepper):

  1. Capsicumfits about as well
  2. Potatofits about as well
  3. Carrotfits about as well
  4. Shallotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, butter, bread, milk, parsley, egg, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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