Why it works: Egg and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 118,967 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓
Corn Meal Fish Balls
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
In a bowl, combine the cold cornmeal mush, egg, shredded codfish, and butter. Mix until well combined.
Form the mixture into balls.
Cook and serve
Fry the balls in a skillet over medium heat until golden brown.
Serve hot.
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.
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Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together118,967 recipes
Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
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 balls and gives them a soft, tender interior.
- Egg
- Binds the mixture so the balls hold their shape while frying.
- Shredded codfish
- Supplies the savory fish flavor throughout the balls.
- Butter
- Adds fat for richness and helps the surface brown in the skillet.
The step that matters
Frying the balls over medium heat. Medium heat lets the centres warm through while the outside turns golden. Too high a heat browns the surface before the interior is hot, and the balls can fall apart if they are not set first.
“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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