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Fish Balls

A savory dish of halibut and salmon balls simmered in a broth with carrot, onion, celery, parsley, butter, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Fish Balls

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish balls

  1. Soak the bread in water, then squeeze out lightly.

  2. In a bowl, mix the soaked bread, halibut, salmon, eggs, cold water, grated onion, pepper, and salt.

  3. Form the mixture into balls.

Cook the balls and gravy

  1. Cook the carrot, onion, celery, and parsley in a little water for about 15 minutes.

  2. Add the fish balls to the pot and boil.

  3. Add the butter and a little sugar, then boil slowly for 1½ hours.

  4. Carefully lift the balls onto a platter.

  5. Stir the gravy into the yolks of 3 eggs and heat until thick, but do not boil.

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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Halibut
Forms the main body of the fish balls, giving them flaky, tender texture.
Salmon
Adds richness and fat, keeping the fish balls moist and flavorful.
Eggs
Bind the fish mixture so the balls hold their shape while cooking.
Bread
Soaked and squeezed, it absorbs moisture and keeps the balls tender.

The step that matters

Stir the gravy into the egg yolks without boiling. Egg yolks thicken through gentle heat; if the mixture boils, the proteins curdle and the sauce turns grainy instead of smooth.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (salmon, bread, egg, pepper, carrot, celery, parsley):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, bread, egg, pepper, carrot, celery, parsley. 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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