Skip to main content
Main

Forcemeat Balls for Ragouts

A mixture of veal, beef suet, herbs, and spices formed into balls, boiled or fried before adding to ragouts.

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

Why it works: Parsley and shallot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,737 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Forcemeat Balls for Ragouts

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pound the veal and beef suet with sweet herbs, parsley, shallots, bread crumbs, pepper, coarse sea salt, and grated nutmeg in a marble mortar.

  2. Form the mixture into balls using raw yolk of egg.

Cook

  1. Boil or lightly fry the balls before adding them to any dish.

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 + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Shallot + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,019 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Lean veal
Provides the main meaty body and firm texture of the balls.
Beef suet
Adds fat that keeps the balls moist and tender as they cook.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and help the mixture hold together with a soft texture.
Raw yolk of egg
Binds the mixture so the balls keep their shape during cooking.

The step that matters

Forming the balls with egg yolk. The mixture must be pounded well so the proteins and fat are evenly blended, and enough yolk must bind it. Loose or poorly mixed meat falls apart when boiled or fried.

Swap the shallot

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

  1. Carrotfits about as well
  2. Shallotthe original
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Spinachfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, beef, parsley, bread, pepper, nutmeg, 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.

More forcemeat balls recipes

Fish 7 See all 27 →

You might also like

Beef, Mutton, or Veal BrothBeef, Mutton, or Veal Broth6 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesRoast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipes