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Veal or White-Meat Forcemeat

A forcemeat mixture of veal or white meat, udder, bread, egg yolks, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 22,662 recipes. Both carry (e)-2-octenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Veal or White-Meat Forcemeat

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the components

  1. Pound the meat thoroughly and pass it through a fine sieve.

  2. Simmer the udder of veal in water until tender.

  3. Cool the udder and pound it, passing it through the sieve.

  4. Prepare the bread panada as described and let it cool.

Make the forcemeat

  1. Blend the pounded meat with the panada gradually.

  2. Add the pounded udder gradually.

  3. Incorporate the egg yolks and season with salt, pepper, and mace.

  4. Work the mixture vigorously until well combined.

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

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

  2. Pepper + macetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

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

  4. Veal + breadtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,056 recipes

    Shared aroma: cis-3-hexenol (green, grassy).

  5. Veal + macetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,761 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

Pepper and mace barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 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

Veal, chicken, or rabbit
Provides the main protein that sets into a firm, cohesive forcemeat when worked.
Udder of veal
Adds gelatinous body and a smooth, tender texture to the forcemeat.
Bread panada
Holds moisture in the mixture, keeping the forcemeat light and juicy rather than dry.
Egg yolks
Bind the mixture and add richness and fat for a smooth, stable texture.

The step that matters

Work the mixture vigorously until well combined. Thorough working develops the proteins so the forcemeat binds into a smooth, cohesive mass. Adding the panada and udder gradually keeps the emulsion from breaking and the texture from turning grainy or greasy.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Sagefits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, bread, 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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