Skip to main content
Main

Forcemeat Balls

Small balls made from bread crumbs, egg, butter, herbs, lemon, pepper, and salt, fried until brown.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Forcemeat Balls

Why it works: Lemon and pepper 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 Balls

Ingredients

Directions

Make the forcemeat

  1. In a bowl, combine the grated bread crumbs, beaten egg, butter, dried herbs, essence of lemon, pepper, and salt, then mix until well blended to form a forcemeat.

  2. Roll the mixture into small balls.

Fry

  1. Fry the balls in butter or clarified dripping until they are brown.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

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

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  4. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Bread + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread crumbs
Provide the bulk and body that hold the forcemeat together.
Egg
Binds the crumbs and butter into a cohesive mixture that holds its shape.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, and helps the balls brown when fried.

The step that matters

Frying until brown. Frying in hot butter or dripping browns the surface through the Maillard reaction, adding flavour and colour. Too low a heat can leave the balls pale, greasy, or cooked unevenly inside.

“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.

More forcemeat balls recipes

Fish 7 See all 27 →

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipes