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Forcemeat Balls

Forcemeat balls made from beef suet, lemon peel, parsley, bread crumbs, spices, egg yolks, rolled and baked or fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Forcemeat Balls

Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Forcemeat Balls

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Combine chopped beef suet, lemon peel, and parsley in a bowl.

  2. Mix in bread crumbs and season with pepper, coarse sea salt, and nutmeg.

  3. Add the yolks of 2 eggs to moisten the mixture.

Shape and cook

  1. Roll the mixture into small balls and coat them in flour.

  2. Bake in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) or fry until crisp.

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 + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Parsley + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

  5. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Beef suet
Provides fat that melts during cooking, keeping the balls rich and moist.
Bread crumbs
Bind with the fat and absorb moisture to give the mixture body.
Egg yolks
Bind the mixture and add richness to hold the balls together.
Flour
Coats the outside so the balls brown and crisp when baked or fried.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolks. Too little yolk leaves the mixture crumbly, so the balls fall apart when rolled or cooked. Add them gradually and stop once the mixture holds together when pressed.

“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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