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Petite Fish Balls

Petite Fish Balls are small fish balls fried until golden and served with tartare, tomato, or white sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sauce and tomato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,469 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Petite Fish Balls

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Shape the fish ball mixture into balls the size of a marble.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry the balls in a basket in deep fat until golden brown.

  2. Drain on soft paper.

  3. Serve with tartare, tomato, or white sauce.

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. Sauce + tomatotop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,469 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Fish + tomatotop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together213 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hepten-3-one (metal).

  3. Fish + saucetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,487 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Fish ball mixture
Forms the main body of the balls and holds them together in a shapeable mass.
Deep fat for frying
Cooks the balls quickly and browns their surface, giving a crisp golden exterior.

The step that matters

Fry until golden brown. Oil that is too cool soaks into the balls and makes them greasy, while oil that is too hot browns the outside before the centre cooks through.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, sauce):

  1. Horseradishfits about as well
  2. Tomatothe original
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Capsicumfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, sauce. 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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