Skip to main content
Main

Force-meat Balls

A savory meatball made with beef suet, raw beef, bread crumbs, herbs, spices, egg, and fried until browned.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Thyme and marjoram match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,225 recipes. Both carry terpineol, which smells pine, woody. The science ↓

Force-meat Balls

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. In a bowl, combine the chopped suet and raw beef.

  2. Sift the bread crumbs into the bowl and add the parsley, thyme, marjoram, lemon rind, nutmeg, salt, and pepper.

  3. Add the egg and mix everything together thoroughly.

Shape and fry

  1. Form the mixture into balls, then coat them in egg and bread crumbs.

  2. Fry the balls in hot oil until they are browned.

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. Thyme + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).

  2. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Parsley + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,979 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

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

  5. Marjoram + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together957 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

Beef suet
Adds fat that keeps the meatballs moist and tender as they cook.
Raw beef
Provides the meaty body and protein structure that sets when cooked.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and give the mixture body so it holds its shape.
Egg
Binds the mixture together and helps the coating adhere.

The step that matters

Frying the coated balls in hot oil. Oil that is hot enough browns the bread crumb coating quickly, sealing the outside. If the oil is too cool, the coating soaks up fat and the balls turn greasy and may cook unevenly.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, bread, parsley, thyme, marjoram, lemon, pepper):

  1. Winter savoryfits better
  2. Sagefits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, bread, parsley, thyme, marjoram, lemon, 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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesRoast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipes