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Forcemeat for Veal

A mixture of veal, ham or bacon, suet, lemon rind, parsley, eggs, spices, flour, and salt, formed into balls and poached.

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 ↓

Forcemeat for Veal

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Scrape the veal with a knife to separate the meat from the sinews.

  2. Chop the veal and pound it in a mortar until it becomes a paste.

  3. Form the veal paste into a ball.

  4. Make two more balls of panada and udder of the same size.

  5. Pound all three ingredients together in the mortar until well blended.

Season and shape

  1. Moisten the mixture with the eggs.

  2. Continue pounding, adding pepper and spices to taste.

  3. Mold the mixture into balls or desired shapes.

  4. Roll them in flour.

Poach

  1. Poach in boiling water with a little salt added.

  2. If the quenelles are not firm enough, add the yolk of another egg, omitting the white.

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

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

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

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

  4. Parsley + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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
Forms the main body of the forcemeat, giving it its delicate meaty texture when pounded into a paste.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and help it set firm when poached.
Suet
Adds fat, keeping the forcemeat moist and tender as it cooks.
Ham or lean bacon
Adds savory flavor and aroma to the forcemeat.

The step that matters

Poach in boiling water with a little salt added. Pounding the mixture into a paste makes it delicate, and it must be poached gently so the egg sets it firm without breaking or toughening it.

“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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