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Forcemeat for Raised Pies

A savory mixture of sautéed aromatics, bread crumbs, chicken livers, veal fat, eggs, and seasonings for pie filling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 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 ↓

Forcemeat for Raised Pies

Ingredients

Directions

Make the bread base

  1. Melt the butter in a pan.

  2. Sauté the garlic, parsley, lemon thyme, and mushrooms until the butter is clear.

  3. Add the crumbed French roll and cover with consomme; stir until it thickens to a paste.

Prepare the livers

  1. Boil the chicken livers in cold water with salt in another pot.

  2. Drain the livers and trim any bad parts.

  3. Fry the livers in clarified butter until cooked through.

  4. Pound the livers in a mortar until smooth with the hard-boiled egg yolks.

Combine and finish

  1. Mix in the veal fat and the bread mixture until well combined.

  2. Add truffles or their liquor.

  3. Add whole eggs.

  4. Add egg yolks.

  5. Add pepper, salt, and pounded spice. Mix well.

  6. Pass the mixture through a fine sieve into a basin.

  7. Cover the mixture with strips of fat bacon until ready to use.

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. Lemon + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,973 recipes

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

  4. Clove + thymetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Mushroom + chickentop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,172 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-butyl acetate (fruity, banana).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken livers
Provide the main body and rich flavour of the forcemeat once pounded smooth.
French roll
Its crumb thickens with consomme into a paste that gives the forcemeat body and softness.
Eggs
Bind the mixture together and help it set firm when cooked.
Egg yolks
Add richness and emulsify the mixture, helping it stay smooth and bind well.
Veal fat
Adds moisture and richness, keeping the forcemeat tender rather than dry.
Butter
Carries the aromatics and adds richness and a rounded, savoury flavour.

The step that matters

Pass the mixture through a fine sieve. Sieving breaks down any remaining fibres or lumps in the pounded livers, giving the smooth, uniform texture a forcemeat needs.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, garlic, parsley, lemon, thyme, mushroom, chicken):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Rosemaryfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, garlic, parsley, lemon, thyme, mushroom, chicken. 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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