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Pish Forcemeat Balls

Small seafood forcemeat balls made with breadcrumbs, suet, herbs, shrimp, cod liver, oysters, and egg, baked briefly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and marjoram match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,979 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Pish Forcemeat Balls

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the mixture

  1. In a bowl, combine bread crumbs, suet, parsley, marjoram, lemon peel, shrimps, cod liver, oysters, and hard-boiled egg yolk, then chop finely.

  2. Season the mixture with cayenne, salt, and nutmeg, then mix in the beaten egg.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll the mixture into small balls, about the size of a walnut, using a little flour.

  2. Place the balls in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) for 10 minutes before adding them 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 + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,979 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. Marjoram + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together957 recipes

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

  4. Shrimp + oystertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together531 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  5. Bread + oystertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,545 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and bind the mixture so it holds its shape.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the balls moist and tender as they cook.
Hard-boiled egg yolk
Adds richness and a soft, crumbly texture to the mixture.
Beaten egg
Binds the mixture together so the balls hold their shape.
Oysters
Contribute savoury, briny seafood flavour to the forcemeat.

The step that matters

Chopping the fish and seafood finely. Fine chopping spreads the fish, shrimp and oyster evenly through the mix, so the balls bind well and cook uniformly rather than falling apart or tasting patchy.

Swap the marjoram

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, parsley, lemon, shrimp, liver, oyster, egg):

  1. Capersfits about as well
  2. Thymefits about as well
  3. Marjoramthe original
  4. Dillfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, parsley, lemon, shrimp, liver, oyster, 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.

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