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Force Meat

A savory meatball made from beef suet, bacon, veal or mutton, bread, spices, mint, and egg yolks, fried or used for stuffing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Force Meat

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. Mince the beef suet, bacon, veal or mutton, grated bread, lemon peel, nutmeg, pepper, salt, and mint leaves very finely.

  2. Mix all ingredients together with the beaten egg yolks.

  3. Form the mixture into croquettes or balls the size of walnuts.

Cook and use

  1. Fry the croquettes in ghee or clarified beef dripping.

  2. Use the croquettes for stuffing.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + minttop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,998 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  4. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  5. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 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

Beef suet
Adds fat that keeps the meatballs moist and tender as they cook.
Egg yolks
Bind the mixture together so it holds its shape when formed and fried.
Grated bread
Absorbs moisture and fat, helping the mixture stay soft and cohesive.
Veal or mutton
Provides the meaty body and savoury flavour of the forcemeat.
Bacon
Contributes extra fat and savoury flavour to the mixture.

The step that matters

Mincing everything very finely. Fine mincing spreads the fat and bread evenly through the meat, so the croquettes bind well and stay tender rather than crumbling or turning dry and grainy when fried.

Swap the mint

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Sagefits better
  4. Mintthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, veal, bread, lemon, nutmeg, pepper, 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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