Name: Forcemeat for Chicken, Veal, Etc
Ingredients: 3 cups stale bread crumbs; 1 cup chopped suet; 1 tablespoon chopped parsley; ¼ lemon peel, grated; ¼ teaspoon pepper; ¼ teaspoon coarse sea salt; a pinch of thyme; a little milk

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 for Chicken, Veal, Etc

Ingredients

Directions

Combine stale bread crumbs, chopped suet, chopped parsley, grated lemon peel, pepper, coarse sea salt, and thyme in a bowl.
Add just enough milk to moisten the mixture, then mix thoroughly until well combined.

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.

Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together9,057 recipes

Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).
Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,037 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Lemon + thymetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,973 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Stale bread crumbs: Provide the bulk and structure of the stuffing, soaking up moisture and milk.
Suet: Adds fat that keeps the stuffing rich and prevents it drying out as it cooks.
Milk: Moistens the crumbs so the mixture holds together without becoming wet.

The step that matters

Adding the milk. Stale crumbs absorb liquid unevenly, so add milk gradually until the mixture just holds together. Too much makes it soggy and dense, while too little leaves it crumbly.

Swap the thyme

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, parsley, lemon, pepper, milk):

Marjoramfits about as well
Thymethe original
Sagefits less well
Dillfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, parsley, lemon, pepper, milk. 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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Forcemeat for Chicken, Veal, Etc