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An Excellent French Forcemeat

A French forcemeat made with veal, butter, herbs, breadcrumbs, bacon, and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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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 ↓

An Excellent French Forcemeat

Ingredients

Directions

Make the veal base

  1. In a saucepan, combine diced veal, butter, parsley, thyme, salt, lemon rind, nutmeg, cayenne, and mace.

  2. Stew gently for 12 to 15 minutes.

  3. Remove the veal and add bread crumbs to the saucepan.

  4. Simmer the bread crumbs until they absorb the gravy, stirring until dry.

Finish the forcemeat

  1. While hot, mix in the egg yolk and set aside to cool.

  2. Chop and pound the veal, then add the cooled bread mixture.

  3. Incorporate 1½ ounces of butter and 2 ounces of bacon.

  4. Add the egg yolks and mix well.

  5. Store the forcemeat in a cool place until needed.

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  3. Thyme + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,973 recipes

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

  4. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  5. 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

Veal
Provides the main meaty body and bulk of the forcemeat.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that keeps the mixture moist and smooth.
Bread crumbs
Absorb the cooking gravy and give the forcemeat body and a tender texture.
Egg yolks
Bind the mixture together and add richness to hold it as a paste.
Bacon
Adds savory, smoky fat that enriches the flavor and moistness.

The step that matters

Add the egg yolks to the hot mixture. Egg yolks set when heated, so adding them to a mixture that is too hot can scramble them into lumps. Mixing them in while the base has cooled slightly lets them bind smoothly and evenly.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, butter, parsley, thyme, lemon, nutmeg, pepper):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Sagefits better
  3. Winter savoryfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, butter, parsley, thyme, lemon, nutmeg, pepper. 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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