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Forcemeat for Veal

A finely chopped veal and beef suet mixture seasoned with herbs, spices, and egg yolk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 for Veal

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the veal, beef suet, and bread crumbs finely.

  2. Add parsley, sweet herbs, onion, lemon peel, salt, pepper, and mace.

Bind

  1. Pound all ingredients in a mortar until well combined.

  2. Moisten with the unbeaten yolk of an egg until it forms a smooth, firm mass.

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

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

  4. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  5. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Veal
Provides the lean meat base that gives the forcemeat its body.
Beef suet
Adds fat that keeps the forcemeat moist and tender as it firms.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and fat, helping the mixture hold together in a firm mass.
Egg yolk
Binds the ingredients together so the mixture becomes smooth and firm.

The step that matters

Moisten with the egg yolk. The yolk must be added gradually and mixed in fully. Too little leaves the mass crumbly, while too much makes it soft and loose. Pounding well-combined ingredients helps the proteins in the yolk bind the meat and crumbs into one smooth, firm mass.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Celeryfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, beef, bread, parsley, onion, lemon, 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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