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Force-meat Balls

Meatballs made with egg yolks, brains, butter, and wine, served in soup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Force-meat Balls

Ingredients

Directions

Make the meatballs

  1. Mash the yolks of the hard-boiled eggs into a paste.

  2. Gradually add the brains, butter, and salt to the paste.

  3. Mix in the beaten eggs and dust your hands with flour.

  4. Form the mixture into balls about the size of a pigeon egg.

Cook in the soup

  1. Add the balls to the soup five minutes before removing it from the heat.

  2. Stir in the browned flour mixed with a little cold water and let it boil.

  3. Finish by adding the wine and lemon juice.

  4. Serve with sliced lemon on the side.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Wine + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,157 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Butter + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  4. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Hard-boiled egg yolks
Mashed into a paste that gives the meatballs body and richness.
Eggs
Bind the mixture so the balls hold their shape when cooked.
Brains
Add moisture and softness to the paste, as the record says to moisten it.
Butter
Adds fat, which makes the meatballs richer and more tender.
Browned flour
Thickens the soup and adds a toasted, nutty flavor.
Wine
Adds acidity and aroma to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Stir in the browned flour mixed with cold water and let it boil. Mixing the flour with cold water first keeps it from clumping in the hot soup. Boiling then swells the starch granules so the soup thickens smoothly.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, butter, flour, wine):

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Vanillafits about as well
  4. Figfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, butter, flour, wine. 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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