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Forcemeat Balls

Small fried balls made from chopped cooked meat, lemon juice, herbs, and egg yolk.

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

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 Balls

Ingredients

Directions

Form the meatballs

  1. In a bowl, combine the cooked meat, lemon juice, salt, parsley, thyme, onion juice, and pepper.

  2. Add enough egg yolk to moisten the mixture.

  3. Form the mixture into balls the size of small marbles.

  4. Roll the balls in flour.

Cook

  1. Heat fat in a pan and brown the balls until cooked through.

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + thymetop 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

Cooked meat
Forms the bulk of the meatball and gives it its savory flavor.
Egg yolk
Binds the mixture and adds richness to hold the balls together.
Flour
Dry coating that helps the outside of the balls brown in the fat.
Onion juice
Adds savory, aromatic flavor to the mixture.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolk. Too little yolk leaves the mixture crumbly, so the balls fall apart when rolled and fried. Add it gradually until the mixture just holds together, since too much makes it soft and sticky.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, lemon, parsley, thyme, pepper, egg, flour):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Okrafits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, lemon, parsley, thyme, pepper, egg, flour. 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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