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Forcemeat for Turkey

A mixture of veal, pork, sweetbread, bread, butter, spices, lemon rind, and eggs used as stuffing for turkey.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Forcemeat for Turkey

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the forcemeat

  1. Mince equal quantities of lean veal and pork finely together.

  2. Cut parboiled veal sweetbread into pieces and mix with the minced meats.

  3. Add bread panada and warmed butter to the mixture.

  4. Flavour with nutmeg, coarse sea salt, black pepper, and grated lemon rind.

Bind and fill

  1. Bind the mixture with beaten eggs and fill both the crop and body of the turkey.

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. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  3. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  5. Veal + porktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,930 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

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

What each ingredient does

Lean veal
Provides the main lean meat body and structure for the forcemeat.
Pork
Adds fat and moisture so the forcemeat stays tender when cooked.
Bread panada
Holds moisture in the mixture, keeping the forcemeat light and juicy.
Warmed butter
Adds richness and fat that keeps the forcemeat soft and flavourful.
Beaten eggs
Bind the mixture and set when cooked, holding the forcemeat together.

The step that matters

Bind the mixture with beaten eggs. Eggs set when heated and hold the forcemeat together. Adding them to a mixture that is too cold or unevenly mixed can leave it loose or patchy, so blend them in thoroughly before filling the turkey.

“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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