Name: Force-meat Balls
Ingredients: ⅔ pound lean veal, finely chopped; ⅓ pound raw salt pork, finely chopped; 1 teaspoon curry powder (optional); ¼ teaspoon black pepper; ¼ teaspoon coarse sea salt; 2 eggs (optional, for beef soup)

Why it works: Pork and beef match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,690 recipes. Both carry 12-methyltridecanal, which smells tallowy, beefy. The science ↓

Force-meat Balls

Ingredients

⅔ pound lean veal, finely chopped
⅓ pound raw salt pork, finely chopped
1 teaspoon curry powder (optional)
¼ teaspoon black pepper
¼ teaspoon coarse sea salt
2 eggs (optional, for beef soup)

Directions

Prepare

In a bowl, combine the veal, salt pork, curry powder, pepper, and salt. Mix well and form the mixture into balls the size of a hen's egg.

Cook and serve

Boil half of the balls in soup for 15 minutes.
Fry the remaining balls in a pan until golden brown. Serve the fried balls in a separate dish.

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.

Pork + beeftop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,690 recipes

Shared aroma: 12-methyltridecanal (tallowy, beefy).
Pepper + beeftop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,971 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Veal + porktop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,930 recipes

Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).
Veal + beeftop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,784 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).
Pork + peppertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together22,121 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Lean veal: Forms the main body of the meatballs and gives them a tender, meaty texture.
Raw salt pork: Adds fat that keeps the meatballs moist and adds rich flavour as it cooks.

“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.