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Fish Balls

Fish Balls are fried balls made from shredded fish, mashed potatoes, butter, salt, eggs, milk, and cornmeal.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Fish Balls

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish mixture

  1. Remove the bones from the fish and shred it.

  2. Mix the fish with the mashed potatoes, butter, and salt.

  3. Form the mixture into balls.

Coat and fry

  1. Beat the eggs with the milk.

  2. Dip the balls into the egg mixture, then coat with cornmeal.

  3. Fry the balls in hot oil or drippings until 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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  3. Potato + walnuttop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together342 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Fish + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 recipes

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

  5. Fish + milktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,432 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

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

What each ingredient does

Mashed potatoes
Bind the fish and add moisture and soft body to the balls.
Eggs
Bind the coating so cornmeal sticks and helps the outside set and brown.
Fish
Provides the main flavor and the bulk of the filling.
Butter
Adds richness and fat for flavor and a tender interior.

The step that matters

Frying the coated balls. The oil must be hot enough to brown and set the cornmeal coating quickly. If it is too cool, the balls absorb oil, turn greasy, and can fall apart before the centers heat through.

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, potato, butter, egg, milk):

  1. Peasfits about as well
  2. Cocoafits about as well
  3. Walnutthe original
  4. Almondfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, potato, butter, egg, milk. 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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