Name: Forcemeat Balls
Ingredients: Meat (beef, veal, or mutton); Flour; Coarse sea salt; Pepper; Herbs (thyme, marjoram, sage, etc.); Water

Why it works: Thyme and marjoram match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,225 recipes. Both carry terpineol, which smells pine, woody. The science ↓

Forcemeat Balls

Ingredients

Directions

Pound the meat until smooth.
Incorporate flour, salt, pepper, and herbs thoroughly.
Form small balls, no larger than a nutmeg.
For Brown Sauce, flour and fry the balls.
For White Sauce, boil the balls in water for three 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.

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.

Thyme + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,225 recipes

Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).
Marjoram + sagetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together507 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Thyme + sagetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,485 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Pepper + marjoramtop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,609 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Pepper + sagetop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,388 recipes

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

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

Swap the sage

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

Winter savoryfits better
Sagethe original
Rosemaryfits about as well
Parsleyfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, flour, pepper, thyme, marjoram. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.