Skip to main content
Main

Forcemeat-balls

A pheasant forcemeat ball poached in soup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Forcemeat-balls

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil the eschalots until tender, then cool and mince them.

  2. In a mortar, combine minced eschalots with the pheasant breasts, bread crumbs, butter, salt, mace, cayenne, and egg yolks.

  3. Roll the mixture into small, equal-sized balls and dust with flour.

Poach and serve

  1. Skim the fat from the soup and heat it in a clean stewpan until boiling.

  2. Poach the balls in the boiling soup for 10 to 12 minutes, ensuring the soup is well-seasoned.

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 + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Pheasant + breadtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together239 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Pheasant + buttertop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together511 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Pheasant breasts
Provide the main meat, forming the body of the meatballs.
Dry bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and help the meatballs hold together with a tender texture.
Butter
Adds fat, keeping the meatballs moist and rich as they cook.
Egg yolks
Bind the mixture and enrich it, helping it set during poaching.
Boiled eschalots
Add savoury, aromatic flavour throughout the mixture.

The step that matters

Poaching the balls in the boiling soup. The soup must be kept at a steady boil and well seasoned, because the meatballs absorb flavour from it while the egg yolks and proteins set. Overcooking can make them tough and dry.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pheasant, bread, butter, 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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipesOatmeal BreadOatmeal Bread51 recipes