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Mushroom Forcemeat

A mushroom-based forcemeat made with butter, spices, breadcrumbs, and egg yolks, formed into balls and poached or fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon 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 ↓

Mushroom Forcemeat

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mushrooms

  1. Cut the stems off the mushrooms, peel them, and remove the fur.

  2. Melt the butter in a saucepan, add the mushrooms, cayenne, and mace, and stew for 5 to 7 minutes, shaking the pan occasionally.

  3. Transfer the mushrooms to a dish, allowing the liquid to drain, and let them cool completely.

Make the forcemeat

  1. Mince the cooled mushrooms and mix with bread crumbs, remaining butter, and enough of the stewing liquid to avoid excess moisture.

  2. Add the egg yolk, salt, cayenne, mace, nutmeg, and lemon rind, mixing thoroughly.

Cook

  1. Form the mixture into small balls and poach for 4 to 6 minutes or fry for 6 to 8 minutes.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  4. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

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

What each ingredient does

Mushrooms
Provide the main flavour and bulk of the forcemeat, becoming tender as they stew.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and give the mixture body so it holds its shape when cooked.
Egg yolks
Bind the mixture and set when cooked, holding the balls together.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour and helping the mushrooms brown while stewing.

The step that matters

Draining and cooling the mushrooms. Mushrooms release a lot of water. If they are not drained and cooled completely, the mixture becomes too wet to bind, and the balls may fall apart or turn soggy when poached or fried.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mushroom, butter, pepper, nutmeg, lemon, bread, egg):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, butter, pepper, nutmeg, lemon, bread, egg. 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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