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Force-meat Balls
Take chicken, veal, beef, or any left-over meat, chop fine enough to make 40 tablespoonfuls, which will be sufficient for six people. Mix with an equal quantity of bread crumbs, season with salt, pepper, a teaspoonful of chopped parsley, and a few drops of onion juice. Mix in thoroughly the yolk of an egg, make into tiny balls, and drop into a small quantity of the boiling stock. Do not let them boil rapidly, or they will break apart. Cook five minutes, drain, put into soup tureen; pour in the hot stock.
A garnish rather than a dish in its own right: small bound meatballs poached in the soup they will be served in. The whole thing hinges on keeping the stock at a bare shiver, since a rolling boil tears the balls apart.
- 40 tablespoonfulsThat is 2 1/2 cups of finely chopped meat, packed loosely, or roughly 3/4 to 1 lb of cooked meat off the bone. The equal quantity of crumbs means another 2 1/2 cups, which is a soft, bread-heavy mixture by modern taste; two parts meat to one part crumbs gives a firmer ball.
- Bread crumbsFresh soft crumbs from a day-old loaf, not the dry sandy commercial kind. Dry crumbs absorb far more liquid and will make the balls tough and pasty.
- Onion juiceGrate half an onion on a fine grater and press the pulp through a sieve; a few drops means very little, an eighth of a teaspoon at most. Grated onion pulp itself works, but it makes the mixture wetter.
- ChoppingA food processor pulsed in short bursts will do it, but stop while the meat still has texture. Taken to a paste the balls turn dense and springy.
- One yolkThe original binds the whole quantity with a single yolk, which is sparing by modern standards; you may find you want a second. The mixture should hold its shape when squeezed in the palm before you start rolling.
- Tiny means tinyMarble-sized, about 3/4 inch, so they sit on a spoon with the broth. Larger balls need longer than the five minutes given.
- Poaching temperatureHold the stock at 180-190F, with only an occasional bubble breaking. Poach in two or three batches in a wide pan so they are not crowded; test one by cutting it open before draining the rest.
- Raw meatIf you use raw veal or chicken rather than left-overs, five minutes is marginal. Poach until the centre reaches 165F, which for a 3/4-inch ball is closer to seven or eight minutes.
- YieldSix servings as the original states, though five cups of mixture rolled at 3/4 inch makes far more balls than six bowls will hold; expect leftovers. They can be poached an hour ahead and warmed through in the stock at serving time.
Force-meat is a long-established term in English cookery, an alteration of the French farce, stuffing (from Latin farcire, to stuff); the 'force' spelling is a corruption rather than a reference to forcing the mixture into anything, though that explanation is often repeated. By the eighteenth century the word covered any pounded, seasoned meat mixture, whether stuffed, moulded or poached. Force-meat balls of this kind were a common garnish for clear soups and mock turtle in Victorian and Edwardian kitchens, where they also served to use up the ends of a roast.