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Jerusalem Fish Balls

Jerusalem Fish Balls are small fish meatballs simmered in a spiced stock and served with a lemon‑tarragon sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 18 ingredients
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Why it works: Garlic and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Jerusalem Fish Balls

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Remove the head, tail, and bones from the fish and place them in a kettle with 1 quart of cold water.

  2. Add the mashed garlic, bay leaf, onion, cloves, and mace to the stock.

  3. Cover and simmer gently for 1 hour.

Form the fish balls

  1. While the stock is cooking, chop the uncooked fish very fine and place it in a bowl.

  2. Add the chopped almonds, mashed garlic, salt, white pepper, and ground mace to the mixture.

  3. Mix well.

  4. Form the mixture into balls the size of English walnuts.

Poach and make the sauce

  1. Strain the stock.

  2. Bring the strained stock to a boil in a saucepan.

  3. Drop the fish balls into the boiling stock.

  4. Cover and cook gently for 20 minutes.

  5. Lift the balls out with a skimmer and place them in a cool place.

  6. Beat the eggs until creamy and place over hot water.

  7. Gradually add the boiling stock until it thickens like jelly.

  8. Strain the mixture through a fine sieve and cool quickly.

  9. At serving time, add the juice of 2 lemons and tarragon vinegar to the sauce.

Serve

  1. Roll the fish balls in the sauce.

  2. Arrange them in a pyramid in the center of the dish.

  3. Garnish the dish with tiny hearts of lettuce, lemon quarters, and parsley.

  4. Serve the remaining sauce in a sauce boat.

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. Garlic + oniontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Mace + white peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,695 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  4. Clove + garlictop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,368 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  5. Clove + almondtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,605 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Fish
Forms the body of the balls and, with its bones, flavours the stock.
Eggs
Beaten and thinned with hot stock, they thicken the sauce to a jelly-like set.
Almonds
Add body and a nutty richness to the fish mixture.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, savoury sauce.

The step that matters

Gradually add the boiling stock to the eggs. Adding hot stock slowly to beaten eggs tempers them, so they thicken smoothly. Adding it too fast or letting the eggs overheat can scramble them and leave the sauce lumpy.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, clove, garlic, mace, onion, almond, egg):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Gingerfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, clove, garlic, mace, onion, almond, egg. 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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