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Codfish Balls

A dish of codfish and potato balls fried in lard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Codfish Balls

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the codfish

  1. Soak the codfish overnight in cold water.

  2. In the morning, drain and pick the codfish into fine pieces.

Make the mixture

  1. Cut the raw potatoes into small pieces and boil them with the codfish until tender.

  2. Drain the water and add the cream, butter, beaten eggs, black pepper, cayenne, and salt.

  3. Whip the mixture with a fork until light.

Fry

  1. Roll the mixture into small balls and fry them in hot lard until golden.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  2. Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Potato + creamtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 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 salty, savoury flavour and the fish texture of the balls.
Raw potatoes
Boiled and mashed, they add starch and bulk that hold the balls together.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and set when cooked, giving the balls structure.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, keeping the mashed mixture soft.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender texture.

The step that matters

Whip the mixture until light. Beating the mixture with a fork incorporates air and evenly distributes the egg, so the balls fry up light rather than dense.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Potatothe original
  2. Spinachfits about as well
  3. Asparagusfits about as well
  4. Capsicumfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, butter, egg, pepper. 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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