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Forcemeat Balls for Soup

Forcemeat balls are small meat mixtures shaped into balls and dropped into soup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,466 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓

Forcemeat Balls for Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the meatballs

  1. In a bowl, mix the minced meat with bread crumbs, smooth egg yolks, and milk.

  2. Season with pepper and salt, then add flour and beaten eggs.

  3. Flour your hands and shape the mixture into small balls, about the size of a nutmeg.

Cook in the soup

  1. Drop the balls into the soup about 20 minutes before serving.

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. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

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

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Bread + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

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

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Cooked veal or fowl meat
Forms the body of the meatball and gives it savory flavor.
Hard-boiled egg yolks
Add richness and fat, giving the meatballs a tender, moist texture.
Beaten eggs
Bind the mixture together so the meatballs hold their shape.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and soften the mixture, keeping the meatballs tender.
Flour
Helps the mixture hold together and gives the shaped balls a dry surface to handle.

The step that matters

Drop the balls into the soup about 20 minutes before serving. The meatballs are already cooked meat held together by eggs. Adding them too early can overcook them and make them dry and firm, while adding them too late leaves them underheated in the center.

“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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