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Forcemeat, or Stuffing

A forcemeat stuffing made with parsley, beef suet, pepper, salt, lemon peel, bread crumbs, egg, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Forcemeat, or Stuffing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stuffing

  1. In a bowl, combine parsley, beef suet, pepper, salt, lemon peel, bread crumbs, and egg.

  2. Moisten the mixture with a little milk if necessary.

Stuff the fowl

  1. Use this forcemeat to stuff your fowl before cooking.

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 + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg
Binds the crumbs and suet into a cohesive forcemeat that holds its shape.
Bread crumbs
Provide bulk and absorb fat and liquid, giving the stuffing a light, tender body.
Beef suet
Adds fat that keeps the stuffing moist and richly flavoured as it cooks.
Milk
Adds moisture so the crumbs soften and the mixture binds without becoming dry.

The step that matters

Moisten only as needed. Bread crumbs absorb liquid unevenly, so adding too much milk makes the forcemeat soggy and dense, while too little leaves it crumbly and hard to pack into the bird.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Parsleythe original
  2. Marjoramfits about as well
  3. Nutmegfits about as well
  4. Thymefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pepper, lemon, bread, egg, milk. 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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