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Codfish Balls

Codfish balls are small fried balls made from boiled codfish, mashed potatoes, egg, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,456 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Codfish Balls

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the codfish

  1. Soak the codfish in cold water for 6 hours.

  2. Cut the codfish into small pieces and place in a pot with cold water. Bring to a boil and cook for 10 minutes.

  3. Remove all bones and chop the fish finely.

Make the mixture

  1. Boil and mash the potatoes.

  2. While the potatoes and fish are warm, mix them together in equal parts.

  3. Stir in the beaten egg and butter.

  4. Wet your hands with cold water and form the mixture into balls.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry the balls in a small amount of butter over low heat until they are light and golden.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Potato + eggtop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,978 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

Codfish
Provides the main savory flavor and the flaky body of the balls.
Potatoes
Add starch and bulk, binding the fish and giving the balls a soft, tender interior.
Egg
Binds the mixture so the balls hold their shape while frying.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the outside brown gently in the pan.

The step that matters

Fry over low heat. The balls are mostly cooked fish and potato, already warm. Low heat lets the centers heat through while the outside turns golden, instead of browning too fast and leaving the surface burnt.

Swap the potato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, butter. 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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