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Forcemeat Balls

Forcemeat Balls are small meatballs made from a mixture of soaked bread, butter, egg, pounded meat, herbs, and salt, then fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Forcemeat Balls

Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Forcemeat Balls

Ingredients

Directions

Make the paste

  1. Squeeze the soaked roll to remove excess milk.

  2. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  3. Add the roll to the melted butter and cook until it forms a stiff paste.

  4. Stir in the egg until the mixture is dry again.

  5. Remove from heat and mix in the pounded meat, parsley, thyme, and salt.

  6. Let the mixture cool.

Shape and fry

  1. Flour your hands and roll the mixture into small balls.

  2. Fry the balls in butter until they are light brown.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Parsley + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Thyme + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,721 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

French roll
Forms the bulk of the paste, giving the balls body and a soft, tender interior.
Egg
Binds the paste together so the balls hold their shape when fried.
Pounded meat
Supplies the savoury flavour and richness that defines the forcemeat.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the outside brown when the balls are fried.

The step that matters

Cool the mixture before shaping. A warm paste is soft and sticky, so the balls may lose their shape or stick to the hands. Cooling lets the starch and egg set slightly, making the mixture firm enough to roll and fry cleanly.

Swap the thyme

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, butter, egg, meat, parsley, flour):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Capersfits about as well
  3. Thymethe original
  4. Cinnamonfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, egg, meat, parsley, flour. 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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