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Chestnut Forcemeat for Roast Fowl

Chestnut forcemeat is a mixture of roasted chestnuts, liver, ham, onions, spices, bread crumbs, butter, and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon 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 ↓

Chestnut Forcemeat for Roast Fowl

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chestnuts

  1. Roast and peel the chestnuts.

  2. Boil them in strong veal gravy for about 20 minutes.

  3. Drain and let them cool.

Make the forcemeat

  1. In a mortar, combine the chestnuts, liver, grated ham, salt, pepper, chopped onions, lemon rind, cayenne, and bread crumbs, then pound the ingredients together.

  2. Moisten the mixture with butter and the egg yolks.

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

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

  2. Veal + livertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together392 recipes

    Shared aroma: enoic acid (butter, cheesy).

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

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

  4. Chestnut + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together696 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Pepper + oniontop 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

Chestnuts
Provide the main bulk and a soft, starchy body for the forcemeat.
Egg yolks
Bind the mixture and add richness and moisture to hold it together.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and help give the mixture a firmer, more cohesive texture.
Liver of the fowl
Adds savoury flavour and a smooth, rich body to the forcemeat.

The step that matters

Drain and cool the chestnuts before pounding. If the chestnuts are still wet or hot, they release excess liquid and soften unevenly, so the mixture turns loose and hard to bind with the yolks and butter.

“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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