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Chicken Force-meat

Chicken Force-Meat is a chicken meatball made with bread crumbs, butter, eggs, and sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Chicken Force-meat

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Soak the bread crumbs in cold water for 10 minutes.

  2. Press out the water from the soaked bread crumbs.

  3. Melt the butter over heat in a saucepan.

  4. Stir in the bread crumbs until the mixture becomes pasty.

  5. Add the egg yolks to the mixture.

  6. Cook the mixture for 2 more minutes.

  7. Transfer the mixture to a plate and cover with oiled paper to cool.

Make the forcemeat

  1. Remove sinews from the chicken meat.

  2. Chop and pound the chicken meat to a pulp.

  3. Rub the chicken pulp through a wire sieve.

  4. Combine the chicken pulp with the bread mixture in a mortar, adding the cold butter, salt, white pepper, and nutmeg.

  5. Stir in the whole eggs, egg yolks, and sauce one at a time.

  6. Keep the mixture on ice until needed.

Shape and cook

  1. Drop small amounts of the mixture onto a floured surface.

  2. Roll the drops into olive-sized shapes.

  3. Drop the shaped mixture into boiling water.

  4. Let the mixture simmer for 2 minutes.

  5. Drain the cooked meatballs.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Chicken + meattop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,449 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. Bread + nutmegtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,997 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

Chicken meat
Forms the main body of the meatball, providing protein and a firm, tender bite when cooked.
Bread crumbs
Soaked and cooked into a paste that lightens the mixture and helps it hold moisture.
Egg yolks
Bind the mixture and enrich it, helping it set gently and stay smooth.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, keeping the cooked meatballs moist and tender.
Whole eggs
Add binding and structure so the mixture holds its shape when simmered.

The step that matters

Keep the mixture on ice until needed. Cold keeps the butter and egg-enriched forcemeat firm and emulsified; if it warms, the fat can separate and the meatballs may turn greasy and crumble during simmering.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, butter, egg, chicken, meat, nutmeg, sauce):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, egg, chicken, meat, nutmeg, sauce. 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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