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Force-meat Balls

Force-Meat Balls are veal meatballs seasoned with shallots, parsley, bread crumbs, egg yolks, and spices, served in soup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,737 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Force-meat Balls

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the forcemeat

  1. Chop the veal and udder (or veal and butter) in a mortar, then pound until smooth.

  2. Combine shallots, parsley, and moistened bread crumbs in a saucepan and simmer until well combined.

  3. Rub the mixture through a sieve and let it cool.

  4. Mix the cooled mixture with the meat and hard-boiled egg yolks.

  5. Season with salt, pepper, and curry powder or cayenne.

  6. Moisten the mixture with raw egg yolks.

Form and serve

  1. Form into balls the size of a large nutmeg.

  2. Add the balls to the soup ten 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. Shallot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Shallot + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,898 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Shallot + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,245 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Veal
Forms the lean, finely pounded body of the meatballs.
Bread crumbs
Soaked in milk, they add moisture and soften the texture of the forcemeat.
Hard-boiled egg yolks
Their crumbly, fine texture helps bind and smooth the forcemeat.
Raw egg yolks
Coagulate gently when heated, helping the balls hold together and stay tender.
Shallots
Add a mild aromatic onion flavour to the forcemeat.

The step that matters

Rubbing the mixture through a sieve. Sieving breaks down the shallots, parsley and crumbs into a fine, even paste. Lumps left behind can make the forcemeat grainy and cause the balls to crumble when cooked.

Swap the shallot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, parsley, bread, milk, egg, pepper):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Carrotfits about as well
  3. Potatofits about as well
  4. Shallotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, parsley, bread, milk, egg, 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.

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