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Force-meat Balls

Force-Meat Balls are brain and egg yolk meatballs simmered in wine and lemon, served with sliced lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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

Form the meatballs

  1. In a bowl, 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. Form the mixture into balls about the size of a pigeon's egg.

Finish 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. Finish seasoning with the wine and lemon juice.

  3. 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
Mash into a paste that binds the mixture and gives it a rich, smooth body.
Brains
Provide the main body of the meatballs, giving a soft, tender texture when cooked.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, keeping the mixture moist and tender.
Beaten eggs
Set when heated, helping the balls hold their shape and bind together.
Browned flour
Thickens the soup and adds a toasty, nutty flavor.
Wine
Adds depth and aroma, with some acidity to round out the soup.

The step that matters

Boiling after adding the browned flour. Stirring in the browned flour and letting it boil cooks out the raw starch taste and lets the flour thicken the soup evenly. Stopping early can leave the soup thin and floury-tasting.

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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