Skip to main content

Pork Forcemeat

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Thyme and marjoram match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,225 recipes. Both carry terpineol, which smells pine, woody. The science ↓

Pork Forcemeat

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a bowl, combine the bread crumbs and rub in the butter or clarified fat.

  2. Add the chopped parsley, onion, thyme, marjoram, salt, white pepper, mustard, and cayenne.

  3. Mix in the chopped pickles or chutney, beaten egg, and gradually add the milk until moist but not sloppy.

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. Thyme + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).

  2. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Parsley + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,979 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Onion + thymetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (apple, bread, butter, parsley, onion, thyme, marjoram):

  1. Sagefits better
  2. Winter savoryfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, bread, butter, parsley, onion, thyme, marjoram. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

You might also like