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Fobce-meat Balls

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Fobce-meat Balls

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Chop the veal and udder (or veal and butter) and pound in a mortar until smooth.

  2. In a saucepan, combine the chopped eschalots, parsley, and moistened bread crumbs; simmer until thick.

  3. Pass the mixture through a sieve and let it cool.

  4. Mix the cooled mixture with the meat and hard-boiled egg yolks.

  5. Season with salt, pepper, and curry powder or cayenne.

  6. Moisten the mixture with the raw egg yolks and form into balls the size of a large nutmeg.

  7. Add the balls to the soup ten 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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

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

  4. Parsley + breadtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,588 recipes

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

  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

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, bread, milk, egg, pepper):

  1. Nutmegfits about as well
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Marjoramfits about as well
  4. Sagefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, bread, milk, egg, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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