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Forcemeat, or Stuffing

A seasoned forcemeat mixture stuffed into fowl and simmered.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Forcemeat, or Stuffing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stuffing

  1. Combine parsley, beef suet, pepper, salt, lemon peel, bread crumbs, and egg in a bowl.

  2. Moisten the mixture with milk if necessary.

Cook the fowl

  1. Stuff the mixture into the fowl and tie it into a floured cloth.

  2. Place the stuffed fowl in a stewing pan and cover with hot water.

  3. Simmer gently for 1.5 hours.

Serve

  1. Serve on a hot dish with white sauce or chopped parsley and butter.

  2. Garnish with grilled bacon.

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 + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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 stuffing moist and rich as it cooks.
Bread crumbs
Provide bulk and soak up fat and moisture to give the stuffing body.
Egg
Binds the stuffing so it holds together when cooked.

The step that matters

Simmer gently for 1.5 hours. A gentle simmer cooks the stuffed fowl through without boiling it hard, which would toughen the meat and can break apart the stuffing and cloth wrap.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Parsleythe original
  2. Marjoramfits about as well
  3. Nutmegfits about as well
  4. Thymefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pepper, lemon, bread, egg, milk. 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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