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Forcemeat for Fish

A fish forcemeat mixture formed into balls and fried or boiled.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Forcemeat for Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. Stew the onion in butter until tender.

  2. Pound the onion with butter, panada, beaten eggs, pepper, salt, and nutmeg in a mortar.

  3. Add the cold fish and mix well.

Shape and cook

  1. Form the mixture into small balls.

  2. Fry or boil the balls until cooked through.

  3. Add lemon juice or anchovy essence for flavor if desired.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Butter + fishtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the mixture and help the meatballs hold their shape when cooked.
Panada
Adds body and softness, helping keep the fish mixture tender rather than dense.
Fish
Forms the main body of the meatballs, giving them their flavor and texture.
Butter
Adds richness and carries the flavor of the softened onion through the mixture.

The step that matters

Mixing in the cold fish. Fish that is kept cold stays firm and holds together better when mixed and shaped, while warm fish can become soft and crumbly. Mixing it well distributes the binders evenly so the balls cook uniformly.

“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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