Skip to main content

Forcemeat for Game

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Forcemeat for Game

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Pound the livers of the game with an equal weight of beef suet and fat bacon.

  2. Season the mixture with salt, pepper, and ground cloves.

  3. If necessary, add some meat from the game to the mixture.

  4. Moisten the mixture with cream and bind it with the yolks of 2 eggs.

  5. If a stiff consistency is desired, cook over gentle heat, stirring constantly until the right consistency is achieved.

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 + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

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

  3. Liver + beeftop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together431 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Beef + clovetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Liver + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,375 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (liver, beef, pepper, cream, egg):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against liver, beef, pepper, cream, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

You might also like

Green Corn PuddingGreen Corn Pudding64 recipesCornmeal mushCornmeal mush12 recipes