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Forcemeat of Veal

A mixture of chopped veal, butter or suet, bread soaked in milk, and seasonings bound with egg yolks, used as stuffing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Forcemeat of Veal

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the veal

  1. Chop the lean veal, removing skin and fat.

  2. Pound the veal in a mortar.

Make the forcemeat

  1. Add ⅓ of its weight in butter or suet and the same amount of fine bread soaked in cold milk and squeezed dry.

  2. Pound all ingredients together with salt, pepper, and nutmeg.

  3. Bind the mixture with the yolks of 2 eggs.

Shape and use

  1. Form the paste into small balls or use it as 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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Lean veal
Forms the main body of the forcemeat and gives it its meaty structure.
Butter or suet
Adds fat that keeps the forcemeat moist and tender after cooking.
Fine bread
Soaked in milk, it adds moisture and lightens the texture of the forcemeat.
2 egg yolks
Bind the mixture together so it holds its shape when formed.

The step that matters

Pounding the veal and fat together. Pounding breaks the meat into a fine, even paste so the forcemeat stays smooth and binds well. Under-pounding leaves coarse lumps that crumble when shaped, while the fat must be fully incorporated to keep the mixture moist.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Nutmegthe original
  2. Parsleyfits about as well
  3. Sagefits less well
  4. Cinnamonfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, butter, bread, milk, 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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