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Salad

Salmon Balls

Salmon Balls are flattened cakes made from boiled potatoes and canned salmon, seasoned, rolled in cornmeal, and fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,305 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Salmon Balls

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop cold boiled potatoes and canned salmon in equal quantities.

  2. Season with coarse sea salt and black pepper.

  3. Shape the mixture into flattened cakes.

  4. Roll the cakes in cornmeal.

Cook

  1. Fry in a small quantity of grease until golden brown.

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 + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Potato + salmontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together952 recipes

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

  3. Salmon + peppertop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,446 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold boiled potatoes
Provide starch that binds the mixture and gives the cakes a soft, tender interior.
Canned salmon
Supplies the main protein and flavour, and its flakes help hold the cakes together.
Cornmeal
Forms a crisp coating that browns during frying and adds a gritty texture.

The step that matters

Fry in a small quantity of grease until golden brown. Shallow frying in a modest amount of fat browns the cornmeal coating through the Maillard reaction. Too little heat leaves the cakes pale and greasy, while too much fat can make them soggy.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (salmon, pepper):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Cucumberfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, pepper. 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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