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Forcemeat Balls for Soup Maigre

These are small forcemeat balls made from crawfish or shrimp, anchovy, egg yolk, bread crumbs, spices, and fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and garlic are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,090 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Forcemeat Balls for Soup Maigre

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. Pound the soft parts of a crawfish or a few shrimp with an anchovy and the yolk of a hard-boiled egg.

  2. Mix in crumbs of stale bread, pounded mace, cayenne pepper, salt, and garlic.

  3. Bind the mixture with a raw egg to form a dough.

Shape and fry

  1. Roll out the dough and cut it into small balls, about the size of marbles.

  2. Fry the balls in oil until they are a fine brown.

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

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

  2. Shrimp + garlictop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,743 recipes

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

  3. Shrimp + anchovytop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together440 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanol (green, fruity).

  4. Anchovy + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,260 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanol (green, fruity).

  5. Anchovy + eggtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,330 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Raw egg
Binds the crumbs and seafood into a dough that holds its shape.
Stale bread crumbs
Add body to the mixture and absorb moisture so the balls hold together.
Hard-boiled egg yolk
Adds richness and a soft, tender texture to the dough.
Crawfish or shrimp
Provide the main seafood flavour and savoury body of the balls.

The step that matters

Frying until a fine brown. The balls are fried in oil, and browning develops flavour through the Maillard reaction. Frying too briefly leaves them pale and underdeveloped, while frying too long can dry the interior or burn the outside.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (shrimp, anchovy, egg, bread, pepper, garlic):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against shrimp, anchovy, egg, bread, pepper, garlic. 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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