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A Superior Forcemeat for Risolles, Fritters, and Savory Meat Balls

A forcemeat mixture of smoked beef, veal, mushrooms, parsley, and French roll crumbs for risolles, fritters, and meatballs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon 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 ↓

A Superior Forcemeat for Risolles, Fritters, and Savory Meat Balls

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the forcemeat

  1. Scrape the fat from the smoked beef and pound it finely in a mortar with the lean veal.

  2. Add chopped mushrooms, minced parsley, salt, pepper, and grated lemon peel, and pound until well combined.

  3. Soak the crumb of the French rolls in good gravy, press out the moisture, and add it to the meat mixture.

  4. Incorporate the beaten eggs into the mixture.

  5. If desired, season the gravy with mushroom powder, ketchup, bay leaf, onion, pepper, salt, and lemon juice before adding it to the meat.

Shape and cook

  1. Form the mixture into desired shapes and either fry or warm in gravy 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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Beef + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  5. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 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

Smoked beef fat
Adds richness and moisture, keeping the cooked meat juicy rather than dry.
Lean veal
Provides the main meaty body and a delicate texture for the forcemeat.
French rolls crumb
Soaked in gravy, it adds moisture and a tender, binding texture to the mixture.
Eggs
Bind the mixture so it holds its shape when formed and cooked.

The step that matters

Pounding the meat with the fat. Fine pounding breaks the meat into a smooth, cohesive paste, so the fat is evenly distributed and the forcemeat stays tender and juicy when 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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