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Force Meat Balls

A dish of ground veal and pork meatballs flavored with bread, spices, wine, and eggs, fried and added to soup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Force Meat Balls

Why it works: White pepper and mace are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,695 recipes. Both carry myrcene, which smells balsamic, herbaceous. The science ↓

Force Meat Balls

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. In a bowl, combine the veal, pork, grated bread, pepper, parsley, mace, and sweet herbs.

  2. Add wine and eggs until the mixture is soft enough to roll into balls.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat oil or fat in a pan over medium-high heat.

  2. Fry the meatballs until golden brown.

  3. Add the cooked meatballs to the soup.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. White pepper + macetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,695 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  2. Veal + porktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,930 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  3. Pork + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,371 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  4. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. White pepper + parsleytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the mixture so the meatballs hold their shape.
Grated bread
Adds bulk and moisture, keeping the meatballs tender rather than dense.
Veal
Provides the main meaty body and a delicate texture.
Pork
Adds fat, which keeps the meatballs juicy and adds flavour.
Wine
Adds moisture and acidity to loosen the mixture and add flavour.

The step that matters

Add wine and eggs until the mixture is soft enough to roll into balls. Too little liquid leaves the mixture stiff and crumbly, while too much makes it slack and hard to shape. Adding liquid gradually lets you judge the texture by feel.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, pork, bread, parsley, mace, wine, egg):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, pork, bread, parsley, mace, wine, 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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