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Savory Force-Meat

Savory force meat is a stuffed meatloaf made with veal, ham, suet, herbs, spices, egg, beer, wine, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Savory Force-Meat

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the stuffing

  1. Mix the pounded veal, ham, beef suet, parsley, thyme, onion, lemon peel, salt, nutmeg, pepper, and cayenne together.

  2. Bind the mixture with the beaten egg and stuff it into the cavity where the bone has been removed.

Bake and finish

  1. Place the stuffed meat in a deep pan, brown side down, on twigs to prevent sticking.

  2. Pour in the beer and bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven.

  3. When nearly done, remove the fat, add the Madeira and lemon juice, and return to the oven.

  4. Bake until tender, about 6-7 hours for older meat.

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 + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  3. Thyme + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,973 recipes

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

  4. Parsley + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

  5. Thyme + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,907 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Pounded veal
Forms the main body of the meat, giving the stuffing its bulk and substance.
Beef suet
Adds fat that keeps the stuffing moist and rich as it cooks.
Egg
Binds the stuffing mixture so it holds together inside the cavity.
Madeira or white wine
Adds acidity and aroma to the sauce developing in the pan near the end.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the finished dish.

The step that matters

Adding the Madeira and lemon juice near the end. Adding the wine and acid only when the meat is nearly done keeps their aroma from cooking off completely and keeps the sauce from thinning or tasting harsh. Removing the fat first keeps the finished sauce from becoming greasy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, ham, beef, parsley, thyme, lemon, nutmeg):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, ham, beef, parsley, thyme, lemon, nutmeg. 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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