Skip to main content
Main

Forcemeat As for Turtle, At the Bush, Bristol

A forcemeat mixture of suet, veal or chicken, bread crumbs, herbs, and eggs, shaped into balls and boiled in lard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Forcemeat As for Turtle, At the Bush, Bristol

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the forcemeat

  1. In a bowl, combine the suet, veal or chicken, bread crumbs, shallot or onion, salt, white pepper, nutmeg, mace, pennyroyal, parsley, lemon zest, and thyme.

  2. Beat enough fresh eggs to create a moist paste with the mixture.

  3. Roll the mixture into small balls.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat fresh lard in a pot until boiling.

  2. Carefully add the balls to the boiling lard.

  3. Cook until they are light brown.

  4. Remove and drain them before serving.

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 + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Shallot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Nutmeg + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Nutmeg + macetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Shallot + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,019 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Fine fresh suet
Provides fat that keeps the balls moist and rich while they cook.
Fresh eggs
Bind the mixture into a moist paste that holds its shape.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and give the balls a light, tender body.
Veal or chicken
Adds savory meaty flavor and body to the forcemeat.

The step that matters

Adding the balls to the boiling lard. Lard must be hot enough to sear the outside quickly. If the balls are dropped into lard that is too cool, they absorb grease and cook unevenly, becoming heavy and soggy inside.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, bread, shallot, nutmeg, mace, parsley, lemon):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Winter savoryfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, bread, shallot, nutmeg, mace, parsley, lemon. 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 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipes