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Fish-balls

Fish balls are small fried balls made from finely chopped white fish, egg, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Fish and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,948 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Fish-balls

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove skin and bones from the fish and chop finely.

  2. In a bowl, mix the chopped fish with the egg, salt, and pepper.

  3. Shape the mixture into balls no larger than an English walnut.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat the fat until smoking hot.

  2. Carefully drop the fish balls into the hot fat and fry until golden brown.

  3. Remove from fat and serve immediately.

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. Fish + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,948 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  2. Fish + eggtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,782 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Egg + peppertop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together50,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Egg and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 50,580 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

Fish
Forms the main body of the balls and gives them their flavor.
Egg
Binds the chopped fish so the balls hold their shape.

The step that matters

Frying in smoking hot fat. If the fat is not hot enough, the balls absorb more oil and turn greasy and loose. A very hot fat sears the outside quickly, helping the balls hold together and brown evenly.

“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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