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Boston Fish-balls

Boston Fish-Balls are small fried codfish cakes made with suet, butter, bread crumbs, anchovy sauce, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Anchovy and sauce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,057 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Boston Fish-balls

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pound the codfish, suet, butter, bread crumbs, pepper, salt, nutmeg, and anchovy sauce together in a mortar.

  2. Mix in the egg until well combined.

Shape and fry

  1. Divide the mixture into small cakes.

  2. Fry the cakes in a pan until they are light 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. Anchovy + saucetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  4. Bread + anchovytop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,260 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanol (green, fruity).

  5. Anchovy + eggtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,330 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Codfish
Provides the main body of the fish balls and their flavour.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the cakes moist and tender while frying.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and bind the mixture so the cakes hold their shape.
Egg
Binds the mixture together so the cakes hold their shape when fried.

The step that matters

Fry the cakes until light brown. Frying over steady heat browns the outside and sets the surface, helping the cakes hold together. Too little heat leaves them pale and soft, while too much browns the outside before the inside is cooked through.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, bread, pepper, anchovy, sauce, egg):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Nutmegthe original
  4. Tarragonfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, bread, pepper, anchovy, sauce, 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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