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Forcemeat As for Turtle

A forcemeat mixture of suet, veal or chicken, bread crumbs, herbs, 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 As for Turtle

Ingredients

Directions

Make the forcemeat

  1. In a bowl, combine suet, veal or chicken, bread crumbs, shallot, salt, white pepper, nutmeg, mace, pennyroyal, parsley, and lemon thyme.

  2. Beat the eggs separately, then mix them into the ingredients until a moist paste forms.

  3. Roll the mixture into small balls.

Fry the balls

  1. Boil fresh lard in a pot, then add the balls when the lard is bubbling.

  2. Cook until the balls are light brown, then remove and drain them.

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

Fresh suet
Provides fat that melts during cooking, keeping the balls moist and rich.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and give the paste body so the balls hold their shape.
Eggs
Bind the mixture into a cohesive paste that holds together when rolled and fried.
Veal or chicken
Adds meaty substance and texture to the forcemeat.

The step that matters

Fry the balls in bubbling lard. If the lard is not hot enough when the balls go in, they absorb grease and cook unevenly. Adding them once the lard is bubbling helps them brown and set quickly.

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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