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Force Meat Balls

A fried meatball made with minced meat, onion, breadcrumbs, spices, and egg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Force Meat Balls

Why it works: Clove and marjoram match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,075 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Force Meat Balls

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. In a bowl, combine the minced meat, onion, bread or cracker crumbs, pepper, salt, cloves, mace, and marjoram.

  2. Bind the mixture together with the egg.

  3. Form the mixture into small balls.

Cook

  1. Fry the balls in butter 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.

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. Clove + marjoramtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Pepper + marjoramtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Onion + peppertop 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 or fowl
Forms the main body of the meatball and gives it its savoury flavour.
Egg
Binds the mixture together so the balls hold their shape while frying.
Bread or cracker crumbs
Absorb moisture and help keep the meatballs tender rather than dense.
Onion
Adds moisture and a savoury sweetness to the mixture.

The step that matters

Bind the mixture together with the egg. The egg sets when heated and holds the minced mixture together. Too little binder, or unevenly mixed egg, can leave balls that crumble or fall apart in the butter.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, onion, bread, pepper, clove, marjoram, egg):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Winter savoryfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, onion, bread, pepper, clove, marjoram, 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.

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