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Chicken Forcemeat

A mixture of milk, breadcrumbs, egg yolks, chicken, parsley, salt, cayenne, nutmeg, fried into balls or used for stuffing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,062 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Chicken Forcemeat

Ingredients

Directions

Make the forcemeat

  1. Scald the milk in a saucepan.

  2. Add the stale breadcrumbs and stir until it thickens.

  3. Remove from heat and stir in the beaten egg yolks.

  4. Mix in the raw chopped chicken, parsley, salt, cayenne, and nutmeg.

  5. Let the mixture cool.

Shape and fry

  1. Use for stuffing or form into small balls.

  2. Dip the balls in egg and breadcrumbs.

  3. Fry in boiling fat until golden 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. Parsley + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

  2. Milk + chickentop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,389 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  3. Milk + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Egg + nutmegtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together24,744 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Egg and nutmeg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 24,744 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Milk
Forms a soft, moist base that the breadcrumbs swell into.
Stale breadcrumbs
Thicken the milk and give the forcemeat body and structure.
Egg yolks
Bind the mixture and help it set firm when cooked.
Raw chopped chicken
Provides the main filling and meaty texture.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool. Cooling the mixture before shaping keeps it firm enough to hold its form. Stirring in hot egg yolks risks scrambling them, so the yolks should be beaten in off the heat.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, egg, chicken, nutmeg):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Marjoramfits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg, chicken, nutmeg. 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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