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Forcemeat Balls
4 tablespoonfuls bread crumbs 1 teaspoonful chopped pars- 1½ teaspoonful powdered 1/2 tablespoonfuls chopped suet ley herbs 1/2 teaspoonful grated Seasoning of salt and pepper lemon rind A pinch powdered mace 1 egg 1 Beat up the egg and mix in the above ingredients, form into tiny balls, roll in flour, and add to the soup.
A garnish rather than a dish: small poached dumplings dropped into clear soup at the last moment. The ingredient list here has been scrambled by the two-column typesetting of the original, so read it as a single list before you start.
- Untangling the ingredientsRead as: 4 tablespoons breadcrumbs, chopped suet (the quantity is printed as "1/2 tablespoonfuls" and may well have been 1 1/2), 1 teaspoon chopped parsley, 1/2 teaspoon powdered herbs, 1/2 teaspoon grated lemon rind, a pinch of powdered mace, salt and pepper, 1 egg. The original sets "1" as "I" elsewhere, so a leading digit may have been lost here.
- BreadcrumbsDry, fine crumbs from stale bread, not coarse fresh crumbs. Fresh soft crumbs absorb more egg and give a slack mixture; if that happens, add crumbs a spoonful at a time until the paste holds a shape.
- SuetShredded beef suet is still sold in the UK and from butchers elsewhere; the packaged version is coated in flour, so reduce the flour you roll the balls in. Cold grated butter is a common stand-in and gives a lighter, less savoury ball.
- Powdered herbsGenerally understood as dried mixed herbs ground fine, typically some combination of thyme, marjoram, savory or sage. Half a teaspoon of dried mixed herbs, crumbled between the fingers, is the equivalent.
- Size and cookingRoll them no larger than a hazelnut. They need 8 to 10 minutes at a bare simmer in the soup, long enough for the suet to melt and the egg to set through; dropped in at the moment of serving they stay raw in the middle.
- Keep the soup clearA rolling boil breaks the balls apart and clouds a consommé. Poach them separately in a little of the broth if the soup matters more than the garnish, then lift them into the bowls.
- YieldThe recipe gives no yield; the quantity makes a dozen or two small balls depending on how small you roll them.
Forcemeat — from the French farce, a stuffing — was one of the workhorses of the nineteenth-century kitchen: a bound mixture of crumbs, fat and seasoning that could be pushed into a bird, spread in a roll of veal, or, as here, rolled small and poached in soup. Balls of this kind appear in English cookery books from the eighteenth century onward, among other uses as a garnish for mock turtle soup. The mace and grated lemon rind belong to that older seasoning tradition rather than to anything modern; the pairing runs through English forcemeats for a long stretch. That the recipe sits in the soup chapter of a casserole-cookery book reflects how such books were assembled — a core of dishes for the new flameproof earthenware, padded out with the standard small preparations any cook was expected to have to hand.