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Mock-turtle Forcemeat Balls

A meatball made from veal, butter or udder, bread crumbs, milk, parsley, shallot, egg yolks, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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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 ↓

Mock-turtle Forcemeat Balls

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Pound the veal in a mortar and rub it through a sieve.

  2. Mix the udder or butter with the veal.

  3. Moisten the bread crumbs with milk.

  4. Mix in parsley and shallot.

  5. Rub the mixture until smooth.

  6. Sieve the mixture.

Season and shape

  1. Once cold, pound the mixture with the hard-boiled egg yolks.

  2. Season with salt, pepper, and curry powder or cayenne.

  3. Add the raw egg yolks. Mix well.

  4. Form small balls from the mixture.

  5. Ten minutes before serving, add the balls to the soup.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  5. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Veal
Forms the main body of the meatball, giving it a tender, meaty texture.
Udder or butter
Adds fat, which keeps the meatballs moist and rich in texture.
Bread crumbs
Absorb milk and help bind the mixture so it holds its shape.
Raw egg yolks
Bind the mixture together and add richness and structure when set by heat.
Hard-boiled egg yolks
Blend into the mixture to give a smooth, rich, fine-grained texture.

The step that matters

Ten minutes before serving, add the balls to the soup.. The balls are delicate and cook quickly in hot liquid. Adding them late keeps them tender and prevents them from breaking apart or becoming tough from overcooking.

Swap the shallot

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, butter, bread, milk, parsley, egg, pepper. 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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