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Codfish Balls

Codfish Balls are fried balls made from boiled codfish, mashed potatoes, butter, sweet milk, flour, and lard or drippings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Codfish Balls

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Prepare the codfish by washing and soaking it.

  2. Mince the fish finely and boil it in water for 20 minutes.

  3. Drain the fish and cover it with fresh boiling water; boil for another 20 minutes.

  4. Drain the fish very dry and let it cool on a dish.

Make the mixture

  1. Add an equal amount of mashed potatoes to the cooled fish.

  2. Work in a lump of butter, sweet milk, and flour to form a stiff batter.

Shape and fry

  1. Flour your hands and shape the mixture into balls or cakes.

  2. Drop the balls into boiling lard or drippings and fry until 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. 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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Codfish
Forms the main body of the balls and gives them their savoury flavour.
Mashed potatoes
Adds starch and bulk, helping the mixture hold together as a soft, binding base.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, softening the batter and contributing to flavour and browning.
Sweet milk
Adds moisture and softness to the batter, helping it bind smoothly.
Flour
Thickens the batter into a stiff mixture that holds its shape before frying.
Lard or drippings
Fries the balls, conducting heat to brown the outside and add flavour.

The step that matters

Drain the fish very dry. Excess water dilutes the batter and makes the balls soft and likely to fall apart or steam rather than fry well in the hot fat.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Potatothe original
  2. Arrowrootfits about as well
  3. Leekfits less well
  4. Shallotfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, milk, flour. 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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