Skip to main content
Main

Piquant Forcemeat

A piquant stuffing made with bread crumbs, butter, herbs, pickles, egg, and milk.

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

Why it works: Thyme and marjoram match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,225 recipes. Both carry terpineol, which smells pine, woody. The science ↓

Piquant Forcemeat

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a bowl, combine the bread crumbs and rub in the butter or clarified fat.

  2. Add the chopped parsley, onion, thyme, marjoram, salt, white pepper, mustard, and cayenne.

  3. Mix in the chopped pickles, beaten egg, and gradually add the milk until the mixture is moist but not sloppy.

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. Thyme + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).

  2. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Parsley + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,979 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Thyme + mustardtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together913 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Bread crumbs
Form the bulk of the stuffing and absorb the liquids to hold its body.
Butter or clarified fat
Coats the crumbs, adding richness and a tender, short texture.
Beaten egg
Binds the mixture so it holds together when shaped or spooned.
Milk
Moistens the crumbs so the stuffing is soft rather than dry.
French mustard
Adds sharp, piquant flavour that gives the stuffing its character.

The step that matters

Add the milk gradually. Bread crumbs absorb liquid at different rates, so adding all the milk at once can make the stuffing sloppy. Adding it slowly lets you stop when the mixture is moist but still holds its shape.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, butter, parsley, onion, thyme, marjoram, mustard):

  1. Winter savoryfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Sagefits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, parsley, onion, thyme, marjoram, mustard. 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