Skip to main content
Main

Forcemeat for Veal, Turkeys, Fowls, Hare

A forcemeat mixture of liver, ham or bacon, suet, lemon peel, herbs, bread crumbs, eggs, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Forcemeat for Veal, Turkeys, Fowls, Hare

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Shred the ham or bacon and liver.

  2. Chop the suet, lemon peel, and herbs very fine.

  3. Add salt, cayenne, and mace to taste.

  4. Blend all ingredients thoroughly with the bread crumbs before wetting.

Bind

  1. Beat and strain the eggs.

  2. Mix the eggs with the other ingredients until well combined.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Ham + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

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

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

  4. Parsley + macetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,268 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Parsley + breadtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,588 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the mixture and help it set when cooked.
Bread crumbs
Provide bulk and absorb moisture to give the forcemeat body.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the forcemeat moist and tender as it cooks.
Liver
Adds richness and savory depth to the forcemeat.

The step that matters

Blend the dry ingredients before wetting. Mixing the solids with the bread crumbs thoroughly before adding the eggs spreads the fat, seasoning and herbs evenly, so no pockets of seasoning or greasy patches form in the finished forcemeat.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (liver, ham, lemon, parsley, bread, egg):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against liver, ham, lemon, parsley, bread, egg. 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.

More forcemeat recipes

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

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipes