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Forcemeat Balls

Forcemeat balls are small meatballs made from cooked meat, herbs, and spices, then fried.

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

Prepare

  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 meatballs and gives them their savory flavor.
Egg yolk
Binds the mixture and adds richness so the balls hold together.
Flour
Coats the balls so they brown evenly and develop a crisp surface in the fat.
Onion juice
Adds aromatic onion flavor throughout the mixture.

The step that matters

Forming and frying the balls. The mixture must be moist enough to bind but not so wet that the balls fall apart. Flour coating helps the surface brown, and frying until cooked through ensures the interior is fully set and safe to eat.

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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