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Grandmother's Codfish Balls

A savory dish of mashed potato and codfish formed into balls and fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,456 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Grandmother's Codfish Balls

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the codfish

  1. Soak the codfish in cold water on the back of the stove until hot.

  2. Drain the codfish and add more cold water until fresh.

Make the mixture

  1. Boil the potatoes.

  2. Mash the boiled potatoes.

  3. Mix two-thirds of the mashed potatoes with one-third of the codfish while the potatoes are still hot.

  4. Add plenty of butter to the mixture.

  5. Form the mixture into balls.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat lard in a pan until hot.

  2. Fry the balls until golden 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. Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Codfish
Provides the salty, savory flavor that defines the dish.
Potatoes
Starch bulks the mixture and binds it so the balls hold their shape.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture to the mashed mixture.
Lard
Conducts heat for frying, browning the outside to a golden crust.

The step that matters

Mixing the potatoes with the codfish while still hot. Hot potatoes mash and blend smoothly and take up the fish evenly. Once cool, the starch sets firmer and the mixture becomes stiff and harder to form into balls.

“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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