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Force Meat Balls
Mince cooked meat or fowl very fine, one onion, a few bread or cracker crumbs, pepper, salt, cloves, mace and marjoram. Bind together with one egg, make into small balls and fry in butter..
A soup garnish rather than a dish in itself: small bound balls of leftover roast meat, browned in butter and dropped into clear broth at the last minute. The original gives no quantities at all, so the proportions are yours to set.
- Working proportionsFor about 2 cups (roughly 10 oz) of finely minced cooked meat, use 1 small onion, a few tablespoons of fine crumbs (the original says only "a few") and 1 egg. Rolled marble-sized, that gives plenty to garnish soup for six.
- "Mince very fine" means very fineThese are meant to hold together without flour or long kneading, so the meat should be reduced almost to a paste. A food processor pulsed in short bursts does it; a meat grinder with the fine plate does it better, without turning the meat gummy.
- The onion should be cookedThe period text implies raw onion minced in with the meat. In balls this small, raw onion stays sharp and releases water that loosens the bind. Sweat it in butter first and cool it before mixing.
- SpicingCloves, mace and marjoram are all assertive. A pinch of ground cloves, 1/4 teaspoon mace and 1/2 teaspoon dried marjoram is plenty for the quantity above; cloves in particular will dominate if measured with a free hand.
- Size matters more than anythingKeep them under an inch. Large forcemeat balls fall apart in hot broth and read as meatballs, which is not the point; small ones keep their shape and stay suspended in the soup.
- FryingMedium heat, enough butter to coat the pan, and roll them so they colour all over -- three to four minutes total. The meat is already cooked, so this is browning for flavour, not cooking through. Butter burns, so wipe the pan between batches if it darkens.
- Adding to the soupIf they are being used as a soup garnish (the recipe itself stops at frying), drop them into the tureen or bowls and ladle hot broth over, or let them warm in the soup off the heat for a minute or two. Simmering them in the pot clouds a clear broth and eventually disintegrates them.
- Crumbs"Bread or cracker crumbs" most likely means dry fine crumbs rather than the soft fresh kind. Cracker crumbs absorb more liquid, so start at the low end and add until the mixture just holds a shape when squeezed.
Forcemeat comes from the French farce, a stuffing; "force" is recorded in English as a variant or alteration of "farce" -- the same root that gives us farci and, at a distance, farce in the theatrical sense of something stuffed in between the main pieces. Balls of forcemeat were a fixture of English and American cookery from the eighteenth century onward, appearing in soups, in mock turtle, around a roast, and in pies, and the seasoning trio of cloves, mace and marjoram is thoroughly of that older tradition. Its presence in a household book is mostly about thrift: a domestic cook with the remains of a roast fowl and a pot of stock could produce something that looked deliberate and garnished at a time when clear soups with a garnish were what a proper dinner opened with.
For Roux
Put on the fire a half pound of fresh butter and let it melt slowly. Skim it, and when it settles, stir into it (very slowly) half pound of flour, cook until of a light brown, stirring all the time. Put away in a jar for use.