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Forcemeat Balls
Take one pound of beef suet and three pounds of veal; put them in a mortar with a few herbs, a little grated nutmeg, dried mace, finely-chopped lemon peel, salt and pepper; and pound them well, adding the yolks of two eggs to bind the mass. Form it into balls, roll them in flour and fry in butter to a light brown color.
A classic garnish forcemeat: fatty, heavily seasoned, and meant to be dropped into soups, stews and pies rather than eaten alone. The proportions are generous — four pounds of meat and fat will make a great many balls.
- Scale it downAs written this yields roughly 60-80 walnut-sized balls. A quarter batch (4 oz suet, 12 oz veal, and 1 yolk, rounding up from the half the scaling strictly gives) is plenty for a household pot of soup or a game pie.
- SuetBeef suet is the hard kidney fat, sold shredded at some butchers and by mail order. Packaged "shredded suet" in supermarkets is often part vegetable fat and behaves differently; ask a butcher for the real thing, and keep it very cold.
- The mortarPounding in a mortar was how a smooth forcemeat was made before mechanical grinders were common. A food processor does the same work in under a minute — pulse the chilled suet and veal separately, then together, and stop before the fat warms and smears.
- Dried maceMace is the lacy outer covering of the nutmeg seed, warmer and less sweet than the nut itself. Ground mace from a jar is the same thing; a quarter teaspoon per pound of meat is ample alongside the grated nutmeg.
- Herbs and lemon peelThe recipe says only 'a few herbs'; parsley with thyme or marjoram, chopped fine, is a plausible reading for this kind of forcemeat. Take only the yellow zest of the lemon — pith turns the mixture bitter.
- Season by tastingNo salt quantity is given. Reckon about 1 teaspoon fine salt per pound of meat, then fry a small test ball and adjust before shaping the rest.
- FryingMedium heat in clarified butter or a butter-oil mix; whole butter alone, as the recipe directs, can brown and burn before larger balls cook through. Veal forcemeat should reach 160F in the centre, about 6-8 minutes for a 1-inch ball, turning as they colour.
- ServingThese are a component, not a course. Add them to clear soups, braises, or under the crust of a veal or game pie at the last stage so they hold their shape.
Forcemeat — from the French farce, a stuffing; the English "forced" meat is a later alteration of the same word — was one of the great utility preparations of the pre-modern kitchen, used to stuff birds, line terrines, thicken soups and pad out pies. Veal bound with suet was a common grand version, veal being mild and pale and taking seasoning readily; the nutmeg, mace and lemon peel here are of a piece with eighteenth-century English cookery and had already been in print for well over a century by the time Oscar Tschirky put his name to this book in 1896. Its appearance in a Waldorf collection is a reminder that hotel kitchens of the period often set a French brigade structure over an English domestic repertoire, and that a great many dishes on a fashionable New York menu depended on a cook somewhere at the back of the range pounding fat and meat in a mortar.