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Forcemeat

Forcemeat is a finely chopped and mashed mixture of meat or fish, bread, fat, and optional egg, seasoned to taste.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Forcemeat

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Chop the lean muscle of meat or fish finely and pound it to a paste.

  2. Force the mixture through a wire puree sieve using a wooden vegetable masher.

Make the panada

  1. Prepare panada by cooking equal parts of bread and liquid until smooth.

Add the fat

  1. If using beef suet, chop it. Pound the chopped suet with the bread.

  2. Rub the mixture through the sieve.

  3. For calf's udder, boil it tied in netting for one hour. Cool the boiled udder, chop the cooled udder, and pound the chopped udder.

  4. Rub the mixture through the sieve.

Combine and test

  1. Combine all ingredients.

  2. Test by cooking a small ball in boiling water for ten minutes.

  3. Adjust texture by adding cream or Velouté sauce if too tough, or a beaten egg if too soft.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  3. Meat + breadtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,924 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Meat + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,594 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Raw meat or fish
Provides the main protein that forms the body of the forcemeat.
Panada (bread and cream or milk or stock)
Holds moisture in the mixture so the forcemeat stays tender when cooked.
Butter, suet, or veal udder
Adds fat that keeps the forcemeat moist and smooth.
Egg
Sets during cooking to bind the forcemeat together.

The step that matters

Test by cooking a small ball in boiling water. Cooking a small sample shows whether the texture is right before the whole batch is used. Too tough means it needs more cream or sauce; too soft means it needs beaten egg to set.

“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.

More forcemeat recipes

Balls 27Fish 25Veal 24Chestnut 18Hare 17Suet 13 See all 56 →

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