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Codfish Fritters

A fried fritter made from soaked salt cod, onions, tomatoes, eggs, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Codfish Fritters

Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Codfish Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Soak the salt codfish in water until fresh enough.

  2. Boil the soaked codfish and drain.

  3. Remove the bones and pound the fish fine in a mortar.

  4. Add chopped parsley, pepper, nutmeg, and 2 tablespoons of butter to the fish.

Make the onion and tomato mixture

  1. Fry the chopped onions in butter until soft.

  2. Simmer the scalded and peeled tomatoes with the onions.

  3. Mix the onion and tomato mixture thoroughly with the fish.

Bind and fry

  1. Add the beaten eggs and mix well.

  2. Fry small fritters in butter until they are a light brown color.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  5. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Salt codfish
Provides the main body of the fritters, flaked into fine pieces that hold the mixture together.
Eggs
Bind the fish and vegetables together and set when cooked, giving the fritters structure.
Onions
Add sweetness and moisture when softened slowly in butter, flavouring the fish mixture.
Tomatoes
Add moisture and acidity, balancing the richness of the fish and butter.
Butter
Adds richness and flavour, and browns the outside of the fritters when fried.

The step that matters

Fry small fritters in butter until light brown. Frying over moderate heat lets the eggs set and the outside brown before the centre heats through. Too high a heat burns the butter and leaves the inside raw, while too low a heat makes the fritters greasy and fragile.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, tomato, egg, parsley, pepper, nutmeg):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, tomato, egg, parsley, pepper, nutmeg. 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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