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Corn-meal Fish Balls

Cornmeal fish balls made by mixing cornmeal mush, egg, shredded codfish, and butter, then frying and draining.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Corn and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,345 recipes. Both carry 2,3-pentanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Corn-meal Fish Balls

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pick over the codfish and soak it to remove excess salt if necessary.

Mix and fry

  1. Combine the cornmeal mush, egg, shredded codfish, and butter in a bowl.

  2. Drop spoonfuls of the mixture into hot fat.

  3. Drain the fish balls on porous paper.

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. Corn + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,345 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Corn + eggtop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,484 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Cornmeal mush
Forms the bulk of the ball and sets to hold its shape when fried.
Egg
Binds the mixture together so the balls hold their shape.
Codfish
Provides the main flavor and savory fish character of the balls.

The step that matters

Drop spoonfuls into hot fat. If the fat is not hot enough, the mixture absorbs oil and turns greasy instead of forming a crisp, browned crust. Hot fat sets the outside quickly so the balls hold their shape.

“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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