Name: Forcemeat Balls for Sour Maigre
Ingredients: soft parts of a crawfish or a few shrimps; 1 anchovy; 1 hard-boiled egg yolk; ½ cup stale bread crumbs; ¼ teaspoon pounded mace; ¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper; ¼ teaspoon coarse sea salt; 1 clove finely minced garlic; 1 raw egg

Why it works: Pepper and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Forcemeat Balls for Sour Maigre

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

Pound the crawfish or shrimps with the anchovy, hard-boiled egg yolk, bread crumbs, mace, cayenne, salt, and garlic in a mortar.
Work the mixture into a paste with the raw egg to bind it into dough.
Roll out the dough and cut it into small balls the size of marbles.

Fry

Fry the balls in hot oil until they are a fine brown.

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.

Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together17,451 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together8,400 recipes

Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).
Pepper + garlictop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,090 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Clove + garlictop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together11,368 recipes

Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).
Shrimp + garlictop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,743 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-ethyl-2,5-dimethylpyrazine (roasted, nutty).

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

What each ingredient does

Crawfish or shrimp: Provides the main seafood flavor and the body of the paste.
Raw egg: Binds the mixture so it holds together as a dough.
Bread crumbs: Absorb moisture and give the dough a soft, cohesive texture.
Hard-boiled egg yolk: Adds richness and a smooth, fine texture to the paste.
Anchovy: Adds a savory, salty depth to the seafood flavor.

The step that matters

Frying the balls in hot oil. Oil that is too cool lets the balls soak up grease and cook unevenly, while the goal is a fine brown crust. Hot oil sets the outside quickly so the inside cooks through without the surface overbrowning.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (shrimp, anchovy, egg, bread, pepper, clove, garlic):

Parsleyfits better
Capersfits better
Thymefits better
Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against shrimp, anchovy, egg, bread, pepper, clove, garlic. 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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Forcemeat Balls for Sour Maigre