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Fish Balls with Two Eggs

Fish balls made from fish, potatoes, butter, and eggs, boiled and fried in lard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Fish and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,488 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Fish Balls with Two Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil the fish and raw potatoes together until done.

  2. Drain off the water.

  3. Beat the mixture well.

Make and fry

  1. Add the butter and beaten eggs, and mix thoroughly.

  2. Drop spoonfuls of the mixture into a kettle of hot lard.

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

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

  2. Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

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

  3. Fish + potatotop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together134 recipes

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

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Fish + eggtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,782 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Fish
Provides the main flavour and bulk of the fish balls.
Raw potatoes
Adds body and starch that helps the balls hold together.
Eggs
Bind the mixture so the balls hold their shape while frying.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture to the mixture.

The step that matters

Drop spoonfuls of the mixture into a kettle of hot lard. The fat must be hot enough to set the outside quickly. If it is too cool, the balls absorb grease and turn heavy and soggy instead of crisp and golden.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Asparagusfits about as well
  2. Potatothe original
  3. Chivefits about as well
  4. Leekfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, butter, 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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