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Codfish Balls

Codfish Balls are fried balls made from boiled cod, mashed potatoes, butter, milk, egg, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Codfish Balls

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Prepare the codfish by washing and soaking it, then mince it finely.

  2. Boil the minced fish in water for 20 minutes.

  3. Drain the fish and cover with fresh boiling water; boil for another 20 minutes.

  4. Drain the fish thoroughly and let it cool on a dish.

Shape the balls

  1. Add an equal amount of mashed potatoes to the cooled fish.

  2. Mix in a lump of butter, milk, and the beaten egg to form a stiff batter.

  3. Flour your hands and shape the mixture into balls or cakes.

Fry and serve

  1. Drop the balls into boiling lard or drippings and fry until light brown.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Codfish
Provides the main flavor and bulk of the balls.
Mashed potatoes
Adds body and softness, helping the mixture hold together while staying tender.
Egg
Binds the mixture so the balls keep their shape.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture to the batter.
Milk
Adds moisture, loosening the batter to a workable stiffness.
Flour
Dusts the hands so the mixture can be shaped without sticking.

The step that matters

Drain the fish thoroughly and let it cool. Excess water makes the mixture loose and soggy, so the balls may not hold their shape or brown well in the hot fat.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, milk, egg, flour):

  1. Chivefits about as well
  2. Potatothe original
  3. Leekfits about as well
  4. Asparagusfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, milk, egg, flour. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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