Home › The Principles of Cookery › Herb Klosse, or Forcemeat Balls
Herb Klosse, or Forcemeat Balls
Prepare the herbs as in HERB PUDDING OR PIE, using double the quantity of parsley to that of any other herb. Mince them finely. Soak two ounces of finely-grated bread-crumbs in a little milk. Squeeze it dry, and mix it with six ounces of grated potatoes which have been boiled some hours before. Add a table-spoonful of flour, three well-beaten eggs, the eighth of a nutmeg, grated, a little pepper and salt, and the minced herbs. Stir all well together with a fork. Handle the forcemeat as lightly as possible, and when shaping it dip the hands in cold water, and wet the spoon with which it is taken up. Form it into balls the size of a large walnut, drop them into boiling water, and let them boil ten minutes. Melt an ounce of butter in a stewpan, and stir a table-spoonful of finely-grated fried crumbs in it. Drain the klosse, sprinkle the bread-crumbs over them, and serve immediately. Probable cost, 10d. Sufficient for four or five persons.
A German-style herb dumpling built on cold boiled potato and soaked bread. The whole thing hinges on handling: the mixture is barely bound, and every extra squeeze of the hand makes the balls dense.
- The hinge — a bare simmer, not a rolling boil"Drop them into boiling water" is fine, but the water should fall back to a gentle simmer once the klösse go in. A hard boil knocks them apart. Poach one test ball first; if it breaks up, work another spoonful of flour into the mixture before shaping the rest.
- The herbsThe cross-referenced herb pudding supplies a green-herb blend; check that entry for which herbs and how much, since this page gives no quantities. All it fixes is the proportion: parsley doubled against everything else combined. Wash, dry and strip the leaves before mincing; wet herbs will loosen the mix.
- Potatoes boiled some hours beforeNot an idle detail. The potato must be cold and dry so it grates into shreds rather than paste. Boil floury potatoes in their skins some hours ahead as directed, let them go quite cold, then peel and grate on the coarse side. Six ounces is about 170 g, roughly one medium potato.
- WeightsTwo ounces of fresh breadcrumbs is about 1 cup, loosely packed — soak in milk, then squeeze hard in your palm or a cloth until it stops dripping. One ounce of butter is 2 tablespoons.
- The eighth of a nutmegRoughly a scant 1/4 teaspoon freshly grated. Whole nutmegs vary; grate less than you think and taste the raw mixture on a fingertip before the eggs make that unwise.
- Fried crumbsThe topping is dry crumbs browned in fat, not raw ones. Fry a tablespoon of fine dry breadcrumbs in a little butter until nut-brown and crisp, then stir them into the melted ounce of butter off the heat so they do not burn.
- ShapingWalnut-size means about 1 to 1.5 inches, giving roughly 16 to 20 balls. Wet hands and a wet spoon are essential; keep a bowl of cold water beside you and re-dip constantly.
- Yield and servingFour or five as the book says, but as an accompaniment rather than a main dish — these belong beside boiled beef, roast pork or a plain broth. Serve the moment they are drained and crumbed; they stiffen as they cool.
- Probable cost, 10dTenpence in late-Victorian money, a deliberately cheap dish. The costings in Cassell's are a period feature and translate to nothing useful today.
Klösse is simply the German for dumplings — the singular is Kloss — and the family runs from bread Semmelknödel to the potato Kartoffelklösse of Thuringia and Saxony. This version combines grated cold potato with soaked bread, though at six ounces of potato to two of crumbs the potato dominates, and the finish of butter and browned crumbs poured over the top is standard German practice for both types. Cassell's New Dictionary of Cookery gathered continental dishes freely and the spelling here is anglicised; the alternative title "Forcemeat Balls" would have given a Victorian English cook a familiar category — a savoury bound mixture poached or fried and served alongside meat.