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Forcemeat Balls

A savory dish of small balls made from bread crumbs, ham, suet, lemon rind, herbs, spices, and egg, fried until brown.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Forcemeat Balls

Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Forcemeat Balls

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. In a bowl, mix the bread crumbs, minced ham, minced suet, grated lemon rind, and sweet herbs.

  2. Add a dust of nutmeg, Cayenne, salt, and black pepper.

  3. Beat part of the egg and mix it into the mixture.

Shape and fry

  1. Form the mixture into small balls.

  2. Paint the balls with the remaining beaten egg.

  3. Fry the balls in hot fat or butter until dark 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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  4. Bread + hamtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Bread crumbs
Provide body so the mixture holds together as balls.
Minced suet
Adds fat that keeps the balls moist and tender while frying.
Egg
Binds the mixture together and the beaten coating helps the outside brown.
Minced ham
Adds savory, salty flavor to the balls.
Grated lemon rind
Adds bright aroma that lifts the richness of the suet.

The step that matters

Fry the balls in hot fat or butter until dark brown. Frying in hot fat sears the egg-coated outside so it browns through the Maillard reaction, while the interior sets. Fat that is not hot enough lets the balls soak up oil and fall apart.

“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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