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Mushrooms, Forcemeat of

A forcemeat made from mushrooms, breadcrumbs, spices, and egg yolks, shaped into balls for soup or serving with poultry.

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 ↓

Mushrooms, Forcemeat of

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the mushrooms

  1. Melt the butter in a stewpan and add the mushrooms. Season with cayenne, mace, and salt.

  2. Cook for 6‑7 minutes, tossing the mushrooms in the pan. Drain off excess butter.

Make the forcemeat

  1. Once cooled, mix the bread crumbs with the minced mushrooms, mace, nutmeg, lemon peel, and additional seasoning if needed.

  2. Moisten the mixture with some of the reserved butter and add the fresh butter, broken into small pieces.

  3. Bind the mixture with the egg yolks and pound in a mortar until well combined.

Shape and serve

  1. Form into balls to use in soup, fry, or serve with roast poultry or minced veal.

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. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

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

  4. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  5. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

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

What each ingredient does

Button mushrooms
Provide the main flavour and bulk of the forcemeat.
Bread crumbs
Absorb butter and moisture, giving the mixture body and a light texture.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, keeping the forcemeat tender.
Egg yolks
Bind the mixture together so it holds its shape.

The step that matters

Drain off excess butter after cooking the mushrooms. Mushrooms release water as they cook, and leftover butter would make the mixture greasy and loose. Draining and cooling the mushrooms first keeps the forcemeat firm enough to bind and shape.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, mushroom, pepper, bread, nutmeg, lemon, egg):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, mushroom, pepper, bread, nutmeg, lemon, 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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