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Codfish Balls

Codfish balls are fried balls made from mashed potatoes, salt fish, butter, eggs, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Codfish Balls

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil the potatoes in salted water until tender, then mash lightly and let cool.

  2. Pick the salt fish into fine strips, removing all bones.

  3. Cover the fish with boiling water and let it stand for 10 minutes, then drain and squeeze out excess water.

  4. Pound the fish with a potato masher until the fibers are separated.

Make and fry the balls

  1. Mix the fish with the mashed potatoes, butter, eggs, pepper, and add salt if needed.

  2. Add milk to achieve a soft consistency and shape the mixture into small round balls.

  3. Fry the balls in boiling oil, a few at a time, until golden brown.

  4. Drain on soft brown paper and season with onion juice, lemon juice, and celery salt if desired.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  3. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Provide the bulk of the mixture and a soft, tender body inside the balls.
Salt fish
Supplies the savory, salty flavour that defines the dish.
Eggs
Bind the mixture so the balls hold their shape while frying.
Butter
Adds richness and a smoother, more tender texture to the mash.
Milk
Loosens the mixture to a soft consistency that is easy to shape.

The step that matters

Fry the balls in boiling oil, a few at a time. Oil that is too cool lets the balls soak up grease and fall apart, while overcrowding drops the oil temperature. Frying in small batches keeps the oil hot so the outside browns and seals quickly.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, fish, butter, egg, pepper, milk, lemon):

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, fish, butter, egg, pepper, milk, lemon. 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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