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Force-meat Balls

A meatball made from veal, boiled udder or veal and butter, with shallots, parsley, bread crumbs, egg yolks, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and parsley 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 ↓

Force-meat Balls

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Chop and pound the veal and udder (or veal and butter) in a marble mortar until smooth.

Make the panada

  1. In a saucepan, combine shallots, parsley, and moistened bread crumbs.

  2. Simmer the mixture until well combined.

  3. Strain the mixture through a sieve.

Shape and serve

  1. Once cooled, mix the strained mixture with the meat and hard-boiled egg yolks.

  2. Thoroughly combine and season with salt, pepper, and curry powder or cayenne.

  3. Moisten the mixture with the raw egg yolks and shape into balls the size of a large nutmeg.

  4. Add the balls to the soup ten minutes 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. Shallot + parsleytop 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. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Shallot + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,898 recipes

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

  5. Shallot + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,245 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Veal
Provides the main meaty body and tender texture of the meatballs.
Bread crumbs
Soaked in milk, they add moisture and bind the mixture so it stays tender.
Raw egg yolks
Bind the mixture together and add richness when moistening the meatballs.
Hard-boiled egg yolks
Add body and a firm, crumbly texture to the meat mixture.
Udder
Adds richness and a soft, gelatinous texture to the meat, or is replaced by butter for fat.

The step that matters

Straining the panada before adding the meat. Straining removes lumps and excess liquid so the mixture is smooth and cool enough to bind with the meat without loosening or cooking the raw yolks.

Swap the shallot

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, parsley, bread, milk, 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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