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Forcemeat Balls for Soup

Forcemeat balls made from breadcrumbs, veal, ham, and herbs, fried and added to soup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley 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 Balls for Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. Combine breadcrumbs, minced veal, minced ham, lemon rind, mixed suet, salt, pepper, sweet herbs, and parsley in a basin.

  2. Add enough beaten egg to form a paste. Mix the paste well with a wooden spoon.

  3. Shape the mixture into balls about the size of a good-sized filbert.

  4. Roll the balls in flour.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat the butter in a frying pan until slightly brown.

  2. Fry the balls in the butter until they are nicely browned.

  3. Drop the fried balls into the soup a few 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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  4. Ham + meattop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,095 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

What each ingredient does

Breadcrumbs
Bind the meat and absorb moisture so the balls stay tender.
Minced veal
Provides the main meaty body of the meatballs.
Egg
Binds the mixture into a paste that holds its shape.
Butter
Conducts heat in the pan and promotes browning on the outside of the balls.
Mixed suet
Adds fat that keeps the meatballs moist and rich.

The step that matters

Frying the balls in butter. Frying over moderate heat in butter that is only slightly brown browns the outside through the Maillard reaction while the inside cooks through. Overcrowding the pan or using too high heat can scorch the outside before the centre is cooked.

“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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