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Tomato Forcemeat

A forcemeat made with bread crumbs, egg, brown sauce, butter, onion, tomato, and raw white fish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter 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 ↓

Tomato Forcemeat

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Pour a little boiling fish stock over the bread crumbs and drain any excess moisture.

  2. Add the beaten egg and brown sauce to the bread crumbs.

  3. In a pan, fry the sliced onion and tomato in butter or clarified fat until soft.

  4. Add the fried onion and tomato to the bread crumb mixture, along with salt and pepper.

  5. Rub the raw white fish through a wire sieve and mix it into the mixture until well blended.

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

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

  2. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Bread + tomatotop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,013 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Bread + fishtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and give the forcemeat body and a soft, binding texture.
Beaten egg
Binds the mixture together and helps it set when cooked.
White fish
Forms the main body of the forcemeat, giving it a light, delicate texture.
Butter or clarified fat
Adds richness and carries flavour when frying the onion and tomato.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness and savoury flavour once softened in fat.

The step that matters

Rubbing the fish through a sieve. Pushing raw fish through a fine sieve breaks up fibres into a smooth paste, so the forcemeat blends evenly and cooks with a fine, uniform texture rather than lumps.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, egg, sauce, butter, tomato, fish, pepper):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, egg, sauce, butter, tomato, fish, pepper. 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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