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Forcemeat, to Force Fowls or Meat

A seasoned mixture of cold fowl or veal, ham, bacon, suet, and spices, bound with eggs for stuffing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 24 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 ↓

Forcemeat, to Force Fowls or Meat

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Shred a little ham, cold veal, or fowl, and beef suet.

  2. Add a small quantity of onion, parsley, lemon peel, salt, nutmeg, and either white pepper or cayenne.

  3. Mix in bread crumbs.

Pound and bind

  1. Pound the mixture in a mortar.

  2. Bind it with one or two beaten and strained eggs.

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. Ham + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  3. Veal + beeftop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,784 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  4. Beef + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  5. White pepper + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,375 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold fowl or veal
Provides the main body and meaty structure of the forcemeat.
Beef suet
Adds fat that keeps the forcemeat moist and tender when cooked.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and give the mixture a softer, lighter texture.
Eggs
Set when cooked, binding the mixture together.
Scraped ham
Adds savoury, salty flavour to the mixture.

The step that matters

Binding with the eggs. Eggs must be beaten and strained so no lumps or stringy white remain, and only one or two are used. Too much egg makes the forcemeat loose and rubbery once it sets, so the binding should be just enough to hold the mixture together.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, ham, beef, bread, parsley, nutmeg, egg):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, ham, beef, bread, parsley, nutmeg, egg. 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.

More forcemeat recipes

Balls 27Fish 25Veal 24Chestnut 18Hare 17Suet 13 See all 56 →

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