Skip to main content
Main

Force-Meat Balls

A veal and suet meatball flavored with herbs, mace, nutmeg, lemon peel, pepper, and egg yolks, fried or boiled.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Force-Meat Balls

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Beat the veal and suet together in a marble mortar or wooden bowl.

  2. Add the herbs, mace, nutmeg, lemon peel, pepper, salt, and egg yolks; mix well.

Form and cook

  1. Form the mixture into small round balls and some into long pieces.

  2. Roll the balls in flour.

  3. Fry them in hot oil until golden brown.

  4. Boil them in water for a few minutes if using for white sauce.

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

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

  2. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  4. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  5. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 meatballs, giving them a tender, meaty texture.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the meatballs moist and tender during cooking.
Egg yolks
Bind the mixture together so the meatballs hold their shape.
Flour
Coats the outside so the meatballs brown well when fried.

The step that matters

Fry in hot oil until golden brown. Oil that is hot enough sears the flour-coated surface quickly, browning it and sealing in juices. If the oil is too cool, the meatballs absorb grease and cook unevenly.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, nutmeg, lemon, pepper, egg, flour):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, nutmeg, lemon, pepper, egg, flour. 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.

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesVeal PattiesVeal Patties50 recipesBeef, Mutton, or Veal BrothBeef, Mutton, or Veal Broth6 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipes