Skip to main content
Main

Force-meat Balls of Cooked Meat

A dish of finely chopped cooked meat formed into small balls, seasoned, and pan‑fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsley and lemon 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 ↓

Force-meat Balls of Cooked Meat

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meatballs

  1. Chop the cooked meat very fine.

  2. Add pepper, parsley, egg yolk, butter, lemon juice, flour, salt, and onion juice.

  3. Mix until smooth.

  4. Form into balls the size of a nutmeg and roll in flour.

Cook

  1. Heat butter in an omelet pan until brown.

  2. Add the meatballs and cook until brown, shaking the pan occasionally to prevent burning.

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

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

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  4. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Cooked meat
Forms the bulk of the meatball and provides its savory flavor.
Egg yolk
Binds the mixture together and adds richness to the meatballs.
Flour
Absorbs moisture and helps the outside of the meatballs brown when fried.
Butter
Adds fat and flavor, and browns in the pan for a nutty taste.

The step that matters

Cooking the meatballs in the browned butter. Shaking the pan keeps the meatballs moving so the butter browns them evenly without the flour coating scorching. Too high heat burns the butter and the outside before the center is heated through.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, pepper, parsley, egg, butter, lemon, flour):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, pepper, parsley, egg, butter, lemon, 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.

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesMeat CroquettesMeat Croquettes52 recipesMeatballsMeatballs37 recipesMince MeatMince Meat37 recipes