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Forcemeat Balls for Soup Maigre

A dish of small meatballs made from crawfish or shrimp, anchovy, egg yolk, bread crumbs, spices, and raw egg, fried and served in soup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Forcemeat Balls for Soup Maigre

Ingredients

Directions

Make the meatballs

  1. In a mortar, combine the soft parts of the crawfish or shrimp with the anchovy, hard-boiled egg yolk, bread crumbs, mace, cayenne, salt, and garlic.

  2. Work the mixture into a paste with the raw egg to bind it.

  3. Roll out the paste and cut it into small balls, about the size of marbles.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry the balls in hot oil until they are a fine brown.

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. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Pepper + garlictop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,090 recipes

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

  4. Clove + garlictop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,368 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  5. Shrimp + garlictop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,743 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-ethyl-2,5-dimethylpyrazine (roasted, nutty).

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

What each ingredient does

Raw egg
Binds the paste together so the balls hold their shape.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and give the balls a soft, tender body.
Hard-boiled egg yolk
Adds richness and a smooth, creamy texture to the paste.
Crawfish or shrimp
Provides the main seafood flavour and protein of the meatballs.

The step that matters

Rolling and cutting the paste into small balls. The paste must be firm enough to shape but not overworked. Too wet and the balls fall apart in the oil; too dry and they crack and turn tough as they fry.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (shrimp, anchovy, egg, bread, pepper, clove, garlic):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against shrimp, anchovy, egg, bread, pepper, clove, garlic. 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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