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Fish Forcemeat

A fish forcemeat made with turbot, soles, lobster, shrimps, or oysters, butter, breadcrumbs, eggs, shallot, lemon peel, parsley, salt, and cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley 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 ↓

Fish Forcemeat

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Pound the fish and butter together until smooth.

  2. Add bread crumbs, hard-boiled egg yolks, shallot, lemon peel, and parsley; mix well.

  3. Season with salt and cayenne pepper.

  4. Incorporate the yolk and white of one egg; mix thoroughly.

  5. For added flavor, you may include minced parboiled oysters and an anchovy.

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

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

  2. Shallot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  5. Shallot + lemontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,523 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Fish (in the method)
Forms the base of the forcemeat, giving it its main flavor and body.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, helping the mixture stay smooth and tender.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and give the forcemeat a softer, binding body.
Egg
Binds the mixture together so it holds its shape.
Hard-boiled egg yolks
Add richness and a creamy texture to the mixture.

The step that matters

Pound the fish and butter until smooth. Fish proteins must be broken down finely and blended with fat so the forcemeat becomes smooth rather than grainy or stringy. Incomplete pounding leaves visible fibres that weaken the final texture.

Swap the shallot

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

  1. Shallotthe original
  2. Leekfits about as well
  3. Asparagusfits about as well
  4. Chivefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against turbot, butter, bread, egg, lemon, parsley, 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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