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Soup

Forcemeat-balls

Small balls of pheasant breast, bread crumbs, butter, egg yolk and seasoning, poached in soup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Forcemeat-balls

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the balls

  1. Boil the eschalots until tender, then cool and mince them.

  2. In a mortar, combine the minced eschalots with the pheasant breasts, bread crumbs, butter, salt, mace, cayenne, and egg yolks.

  3. Roll the mixture into small balls of equal size and dust with flour.

Poach and serve

  1. Skim the fat from the soup and heat it in a clean stewpan until boiling.

  2. Poach the balls in the boiling soup for 10 to 12 minutes, ensuring the soup is well-seasoned.

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 + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  3. Pheasant + breadtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together239 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Pheasant + buttertop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together511 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Pheasant breasts
Provide the main meat, which is pounded into a soft, cohesive base for the balls.
Dry bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and bind the meat so the balls hold their shape.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender, moist texture in the cooked balls.
Egg yolks
Bind the mixture and help it set firm when poached.

The step that matters

Poach the balls in gently boiling soup. Forcemeat is delicate; a hard boil can break the balls apart and toughen the proteins, so keep the soup at a steady simmer-level boil while the balls cook through.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pheasant, bread, butter, 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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