When I was researching forcemeat, I came across a term I hadn’t heard of before: forcemeat balls. I didn’t know they were, so I did some research and decided to write a helpful post on forcemeat balls to share with you.

What are forcemeat balls?

Forcemeat balls are made of a seasoned ground meat, fat and bread mixture and then rolled into balls and cooked. This forcemeat ball mixture can also be used as stuffing. Forcemeat balls are a traditional dish that can be found in cookbooks dating back to the 1800s.

Many people assume that forcemeat balls are the same as meatballs and I did too. However, that’s not true. Keep reading to learn about the difference between forcemeat balls and meatballs and the different ways you can cook and serve forcemeat balls like a savvy home cook from the 1800s (and in the present day too).

All about forcemeat balls!

While researching forcemeat balls, I noticed that many of the recipes had similar ingredients, including one that caught me by surprise: parsley! (I guess I thought they didn’t have parsley in the olden days.)

Forcemeat balls typically contain these ingredients:

• Meat, either beef, veal, pork, rabbit, game or even chicken.
• Fat, including pig fat (lard, bacon, fatback, etc.), butter and/or suet (which is fat that surrounds the kidneys).
• Parsley!
• Bread and/or breadcrumbs.
• Eggs.
• Herbs and spices, including sage, thyme, marjoram, tarragon, salt and pepper. Some recipes call for other flavourings such as mace, nutmeg and grated lemon peel.
• Onions and/or garlic.

Forcemeat balls can be made with any bits of chopped up meat and fat which means you can turn economical cuts into tasty delights and stretch your food budget. According to food historian, Rae Katherine Eighmey, in her book, Stirring the Pot with Benjamin Franklin: A Founding Father’s Culinary Adventures, cooks and homemakers in the 1800s added forcemeat balls to all sorts of dishes to liven them up.  

When I was looking for more information about forcemeat balls, I saw the term vegetarian forcemeat balls come up in the search bar, so I looked at those pages too. Though people search for vegetarian forcemeat balls, what comes up are mostly recipes called stuffing balls or vegetarian stuffing balls. In case that floats your boat—or the boat of your dinner guest—I’ll include a bit about them here too.

Vegetarian forcemeat balls—also called stuffing balls—typically contain these ingredients:

• Onions and/or garlic.
• Vegetarian fat, such as butter or olive oil.
• Herbs and spices including sage, salt and pepper.
• Bread and/or breadcrumbs.
• Eggs (to bind the dry ingredients together).
• Broth.

Forcemeat balls are made by mixing all the ingredients together and then shaping the meat mixture into balls. If you don’t want forcemeat balls, you can also shape this mixture into patties, use it as stuffing or pop it into muffin tins to make a portable snack.

Once you’ve made the forcemeat balls, you can cook them up using whatever method works for you.

Ways to cook forcemeat balls:

• Fry in a pan.
• Deep fry (and watch your forcemeat balls float to the top when they’re ready).
• In the oven.
• In a soup.
• Simmer in a sauce (either in the oven or on the stove).
• Follow one of the recipes listed in the recipe section below.

Now that you know a bit more about what forcemeat balls are, you might still be wondering one thing…

What’s the difference between forcemeat balls and meatballs?

From looking at a bunch of recipes, it looks like forcemeat balls and meatballs are very similar dishes of orb-shaped meat. Forcemeat ball recipes tend to include another fat source such as bacon or fatback, etc. whereas this isn’t the case with modern-day meatballs (in the recipes I looked at anyway).

Common ingredients for meatballs include:

• Ground beef and/or ground pork.
• Breadcrumbs.
• Shredded cheese, especially Parmesan cheese.
• Milk (sometimes).
• Onions and/or garlic and parsley. (Everyone loves parsley!)
• Spices such as salt, pepper and Italian seasoning.

In a recipe called Meatball Nirvana—shared by LovesToHost on All Recipes—the meatballs contain the classic ingredients above with a few extras. The Nirvana might be due to the addition of Frank’s Red Hot, Worcestershire sauce and red pepper flakes. [I keep meaning to start meditating again but maybe Meatball Nirvana would do the trick instead?]

What cultures cook forcemeat balls?

This isn’t an exhaustive answer but, in my search, I came across references to forcemeat balls in Austrian, Dutch, English, Jewish and early American cooking.

I found one alternate name for forcemeat balls; Dutch forcemeat balls are called frikkadels. Frikkadels are also a comfort food in South Africa which makes sense given the Dutch heritage there.

Traditional ways to eat forcemeat balls (and where to find those recipes)

Eating forcemeat balls could be adventurous in the olden days as you’ll see from the recipes list below!

Forcemeat balls in a pie

Recipe name:

Old English Duck Pie with Forcemeat Balls and Chestnuts

Interesting tidbit about this recipe:

This duck pie is a “spectacular” dish for the wintertime, especially around the holidays.

Where to find this recipe:

Check out Epicurus for the Old English Duck Pie with Forcemeat Balls and Chestnuts recipe.

Forcemeat balls for mock turtle soup

Recipe name:

Forcemeat Balls for Mock Turtle Soup

Interesting tidbit about this recipe:

The mock turtle is made with beef, neck meat and half of a “fine” calf’s head.

Where to find this recipe:

Find recipes for both the mock turtle soup and the forcemeat balls in Eliza Acton’s 1860 classic, Modern Cookery, for Private Families: Reduced to a System of Easy Practice, in a Series of Carefully Tested Receipts, in which the Principles of Baron Liebig and Other Eminent Writers Have Been as Much as Possible Applied and Explained. It’s available as a free e-book on Google Books.

Forcemeat balls to accompany a rabbit or game stew

Recipe name:

Forcemeat Balls

Interesting tidbit about this recipe:

This is a recipe from the Time Life series called, Cooking of The British Isles. Casey, a reviewer on Amazon, wants us to know that, “This Time Life series “Foods of the World” is actually 54 books (27 hardcover + 27 spiral-bound companion recipe booklets). I am recipe hungry and did not know this important fact until after I received the hardcover book and read the index to find / learn the recipes for most photographed foods are in the companion recipe booklet.”

Where to find this recipe:

Even if you can’t find the recipe companion booklets, don’t worry because the Forcemeat Balls recipe is here on Astray.  

Forcemeat balls in gravy

Recipe name:

Forcemeat Balls: Meatballs with an Historic French Flair

Interesting tidbit about this recipe:

This 1824 recipe was found by a food historian, Joyce White, and the recipe instructions didn’t include measurements! Fortunately for us, Joyce has modernized the recipe and made it much more precise for us modern-day experimenters.

Where to find this recipe:

Look for Meatballs with an Historic French Flair on Joyce’s website called A Taste of History with Joyce White.

Forcemeat balls in a calf’s head

Recipe name:

Calf’s Head

Interesting tidbit about this recipe:

It’s not for the squeamish as it calls for a full calf’s head which means you, the home cook, must remove the tongue, brains, eyeballs and the bones before even getting to the forcemeat part of the recipe.

Where to find this recipe:

This recipe is in the 1870 cookbook called, How to Cook, Carve and Eat: Or, Wholesome Food, and How to Prepare it for the Table by W. A. Henderson. You can pick up a free e-book of How to Cook, Carve and Eat on Google Books here.

Modern day recipes for forcemeat balls

If you don’t have a calf’s head to process, you might wonder if you can still enjoy forcemeat balls. Of course!

Here are a couple modern-day forcemeat ball recipes:

• Chestnut and Pork Forcemeat Balls – From the Waitrose site.
• Sage & Onion Forcemeat Balls with Bacon & Sundried Tomatoes – This is Ina Paarman’s recipe (and she doesn’t skimp on the bacon—the balls are wrapped in bacon).
• Forcemeat Stuffing Recipe – This is the recipe that’s cooked in a muffin tin. Not quite balls but squished balls.
• Easy Sage and Onion Stuffing Balls – This is a vegetarian option, just in case you need it.

Bonus: old-timey slang! What did “forcemeat ball” mean in the 1890s?

Just like modern times, slang existed in the 1890s and forcemeat ball was a slang term that had nothing to do with delicious orbs of meat.

According to the 1893 book called, Slang and Its Analogues Past and Present, by John S. Farmer and W. E. Henley, a forcemeat ball was not something you’d want.

Here’s the 1890s definition of forcemeat ball (with 1890s-style punctuation):

FORCEMEAT BALL, subs, pkr, (old). –Something endured from compulsion: as (1) a rape : (2) going to prison ; (3) transportation ; (4) an affiliation order ; (5) abstention (from drink, pleasure, etc.) through impecuniosity.

[Full disclosure: I just had to look up impecuniosity to learn that it means very poor/destitute.]

Conclusion

Well, that’s all for now, folks. I hope you enjoyed learning about forcemeat balls as much as I did!