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Forcemeat Balls, Brain

Forcemeat balls made from brains, flour, parsley, salt, pepper, and egg, boiled, pounded, formed, fried, and served.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Forcemeat Balls, Brain

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the brains

  1. Clean and soak the brains in lukewarm water for three hours.

  2. Boil the brains until cooked.

Shape the balls

  1. Once cold, pound the brains in a mortar with flour, parsley, salt, and pepper.

  2. Bind the mixture with the raw egg and form into small balls.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry the balls in hot oil until light brown, about ten minutes.

  2. Drop them into a tureen to serve.

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

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

  2. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Parsley + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,765 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Brains
Form the main body of the forcemeat balls, giving them their soft, rich filling.
Flour
Absorbs moisture from the pounded brains, helping the mixture hold together.
Raw egg
Binds the mixture so it holds its shape when formed into balls.

The step that matters

Bind the mixture with the raw egg and form into small balls. Raw egg is the binder that holds the pounded brains and flour together. If the mixture is too wet or not bound well, the balls can crumble or lose their shape during frying.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, pepper, egg):

  1. Turmericfits about as well
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Nutmegfits about as well
  4. Jalapenofits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, 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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