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Forcemeat Fir Turtle

A forcemeat mixture of suet, veal or chicken, bread crumbs, seasonings, and eggs, formed into balls and boiled in lard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 ↓

Forcemeat Fir Turtle

Ingredients

Directions

Make the forcemeat

  1. Combine suet, veal or chicken, bread crumbs, shallot or onion, and seasonings in a bowl.

  2. Beat fresh eggs separately, then mix into the ingredients to form a moist paste.

  3. Roll the mixture into small balls.

Cook and serve

  1. Boil the balls in fresh lard until they are light brown.

  2. Remove from the lard and drain them 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. Shallot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

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

  3. Nutmeg + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

  4. Nutmeg + macetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Shallot + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,019 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Fine fresh suet
Provides fat that keeps the forcemeat moist and rich as it cooks.
Fresh eggs
Bind the mixture into a paste that holds its shape when rolled.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and give the forcemeat a light, tender body.
Veal or chicken
Adds lean meat for savoury flavour and body in the forcemeat.

The step that matters

Boil the balls in fresh lard until light brown. Frying in hot lard browns the outside through the Maillard reaction while the interior cooks through. If the lard is too cool, the balls absorb grease and turn heavy; if too hot, they darken before cooking inside.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, bread, shallot, nutmeg, mace, parsley, lemon):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Winter savoryfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, bread, shallot, nutmeg, mace, parsley, lemon. 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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