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Forcemeat-balls

Forcemeat balls are small meatballs made from boiled eschalots, egg yolks, bread crumbs, butter, and spices, poached in beef broth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Forcemeat-balls

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the balls

  1. Boil the eschalots until tender, then cool and mince them.

  2. In a mortar, combine minced eschalots with egg yolks and mix well.

  3. Roll the mixture into small, equal-sized balls and dust with flour.

Poach

  1. Skim fat from the broth and heat it in a clean stewpan until boiling.

  2. Poach the balls in the boiling broth for 10 to 12 minutes, ensuring the broth is seasoned with salt and cayenne.

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

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

  2. Bread + beeftop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  3. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

  4. Butter + beeftop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,847 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Bind the eschalots together so the balls hold their shape while poaching.
Eschalots
Provide the main savoury flavour and aroma of the forcemeat balls.
Beef broth or stock
Poaching liquid that cooks the balls and carries seasoning into them.

The step that matters

Poaching the balls in boiling broth. Egg yolks set with heat, so the broth must be boiling and the balls kept in it for the stated time. Too little heat or time leaves them soft and fragile, while too much can make them tough and rubbery.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, bread, butter, beef):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Macethe original

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

“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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