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Forceme At Balls, Fov Jugged Hare

Savoury balls of forcemeat made with hare liver, bacon, bread crumbs and egg yolk, fried in butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Forceme At Balls, Fov Jugged Hare

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the ingredients

  1. Grate the stale bread finely.

  2. Pare and grate or chop the lemon peel very fine.

  3. Chop the parsley and thyme fine.

  4. Boil the liver for 3 minutes, then chop it fine.

  5. Break the bacon into small pieces and add.

  6. Chop the eschalot fine and add.

Mix and shape

  1. Beat the mixture with your fingers and add the egg yolk.

  2. Mix all ingredients together until smooth.

  3. Add port wine if desired and mix well.

  4. Form the mixture into balls and fry in butter.

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,973 recipes

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

  4. Parsley + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Thyme + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,907 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

Stale bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and give the balls body so they hold their shape.
Liver of hare
Adds rich, meaty flavour and a soft, moist texture to the forcemeat.
Rasped bacon
Adds fat and savoury flavour, keeping the balls moist as they cook.
Egg yolk
Binds the mixture together so it holds its shape when fried.
Butter
Fat for frying that browns the outside and adds richness.

The step that matters

Form the mixture into balls and fry in butter. The mixture is soft and held together only by bread and egg yolk, so it can break apart or dry out if fried too hot or too long. Gentle heat in butter browns the outside while keeping the centre moist.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, lemon, parsley, thyme, liver, butter, egg):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Sagefits better
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, lemon, parsley, thyme, liver, butter, 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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