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Fish Forcemeat

A fish forcemeat made from whitefish, bread, suet, eggs, parsley, spices, and lemon juice, used for stuffing fish or forming quenelles.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Fish Forcemeat

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the panada

  1. Soak some bread in cold water.

  2. Wring the soaked bread dry with a clean kitchen towel.

Make the forcemeat

  1. Combine the soaked bread with the whitefish, suet, eggs, parsley, pepper, salt, nutmeg, and lemon juice.

  2. Mash the mixture to a paste, ensuring the fish is free from bones.

Shape and cook

  1. Stuff small fish with the mixture.

  2. Form the mixture into little balls (quenelles).

  3. Roll the quenelles in flour.

  4. Fry or poach the quenelles for garnishing or ragouts.

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 + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Parsley + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Whitefish
Forms the main body of the forcemeat and gives it its delicate flavor.
Bread panada
Adds moisture and softness, keeping the forcemeat light rather than dense.
Minced suet
Adds fat, which gives the forcemeat richness and a tender texture.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and help it set when cooked.

The step that matters

Wring the soaked bread dry. Excess water in the panada would thin the paste and make the forcemeat loose, so it may not hold its shape when formed or cooked.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (whitefish, bread, egg, parsley, pepper, lemon):

  1. Dillfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Nutmegthe original
  4. Marjoramfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against whitefish, bread, egg, parsley, pepper, lemon. 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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