Skip to main content
Main

Forcemeat for Dressing Fish Fillets

A forcemeat made from anchovies, bread, parsley, egg yolk, lemon, and seasonings, used to dress fish fillets.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Forcemeat for Dressing Fish Fillets

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Finely pound the anchovies, grated bread, chopped parsley, and the yolk of the hard boiled egg.

  2. Add grated lemon peel, lemon juice, pepper, and salt.

  3. Mix everything into a paste with the two eggs.

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

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

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

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

  5. Bread + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,588 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Anchovies
Provide a salty, savory depth that flavors the forcemeat.
Grated bread
Absorbs liquid and gives the paste body and a soft, tender texture.
Eggs
Bind the mixture into a paste and help it set when cooked.
Hard boiled egg yolk
Adds richness and a crumbly, smooth texture to the paste.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and balances the fish.

The step that matters

Pounding the anchovies and bread to a fine paste. If the anchovies, bread and yolk are not finely pounded, the forcemeat stays lumpy and the eggs cannot bind it evenly, giving a grainy texture.

“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 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipes