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Veal Forcemeat

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 22,662 recipes. Both carry (e)-2-octenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Veal Forcemeat

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Prepare fine herbs with bread and consommé; set aside to cool.

  2. Remove the nut from a fillet of veal, slice the veal, and scrape each slice to remove meat from sinews.

  3. Chop the veal well, pound it in a mortar, and rub it through a fine sieve.

  4. Pound the side fat from a dressed fillet of veal until smooth.

  5. Combine the cold bread with the fat, rub and pound together, then sieve into the veal.

  6. Pound the mixture again, then add 1 whole egg and 2 yolks, along with fine white pepper and coarse sea salt.

  7. If not using immediately, place in a basin covered with bacon.

  8. When ready, shape into balls or desired forms.

  9. For yellow balls, mix 2 tablespoons of forcemeat with yolks of 6 hard-boiled eggs and 1 raw yolk until smooth.

  10. Roll into balls and boil in salted water; small balls need 5 minutes, adjust time for larger ones.

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. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  2. Bread + vealtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,056 recipes

    Shared aroma: cis-3-hexenol (green, grassy).

  3. Egg + white peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,312 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

  4. Veal + white peppertop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Bread + white peppertop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together925 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, veal, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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