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Nice Forcemeat' for Stuffings, Etc

A seasoned mixture of cold chicken, veal, and beef with pepper, salt, herbs, nutmeg, optional ham and garlic, eggs, butter or marrow, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and beef match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,148 recipes. Both carry 2-furfurylthiol, which smells coffee, roasted. The science ↓

Nice Forcemeat' for Stuffings, Etc

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Shred the cold chicken, veal, and beef into small pieces and mix them together.

  2. Season the mixture with pepper, coarse sea salt, sweet herbs, and nutmeg for white meat or add minced ham and garlic for a savory dish.

  3. Pound or chop the mixture very fine, or run it through a sausage chopper.

Make and use the forcemeat

  1. Make a paste with the mixture, 2 raw eggs, and some butter or marrow.

  2. Stuff your joint or poultry with the forcemeat.

  3. If there is leftover forcemeat, roll it into balls, flour them, and fry in boiling lard for a garnish.

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. Chicken + beeftop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,148 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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

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

  3. Chicken + garlictop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,850 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-ethyl-2,5-dimethylpyrazine (roasted, nutty).

  4. Pepper + garlictop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,090 recipes

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

  5. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cold chicken, veal and beef
Provide the bulk of the forcemeat and its meaty flavour and body.
Raw eggs
Bind the minced meat into a cohesive paste that holds its shape when stuffed or fried.
Butter or marrow
Adds fat for moisture and a richer, softer texture in the paste.
Flour
Dusts the leftover balls so they brown and crisp when fried.

The step that matters

Pound or chop the mixture very fine. Fine comminution spreads the fat and proteins evenly and lets the eggs bind the meat into a smooth paste; coarse pieces stay crumbly and fall apart when stuffed or fried.

Swap the garlic

The recipe marks garlic as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, veal, beef, pepper, nutmeg, ham, egg):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Garlicthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, veal, beef, pepper, nutmeg, ham, 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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