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Force-Meat

Force Meat is a meatball made from beef suet, veal or beef, bread crumbs, spices, and egg, fried or used as stuffing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and marjoram match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,979 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Force-Meat

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. Mince the beef suet and cooked veal or beef very fine.

  2. Add the bread crumbs, nutmeg, pepper, salt, parsley, and marjoram; mix well.

  3. Moisten the mixture with the beaten egg.

Shape and fry

  1. Form the mixture into balls.

  2. Fry the balls in fresh dripping until light brown, or use as stuffing.

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 + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,979 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Nutmeg + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together687 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  4. Nutmeg + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + marjoramtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef suet
Adds fat that keeps the meatballs moist and tender as they cook.
Cooked veal or beef
Provides the meaty base and body of the mixture.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and help the mixture hold together with a light texture.
Beaten egg
Binds the mixture so the balls keep their shape.

The step that matters

Moisten with the beaten egg. The egg must be mixed in evenly so it binds the crumbs and meat; too much liquid makes the balls soft and likely to fall apart when shaped and fried.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Sagefits better
  3. Winter savoryfits about as well
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, veal, bread, pepper, parsley, marjoram, 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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