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Codfish Balls

A fried ball made from codfish, mashed potatoes, butter, egg, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Codfish Balls

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the codfish

  1. Cut the codfish into pieces, removing bones and skin.

  2. Shred the codfish and place it in cold water on the stove.

  3. Once it begins to boil, change the water.

  4. Repeat until the fish is tender and free from salt.

Make and fry the balls

  1. Mix the codfish with twice the quantity of mashed potatoes.

  2. Add a little butter and the beaten egg to the mixture.

  3. Form the mixture into cakes, coat with flour, and fry in boiling lard 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 + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Potato + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,355 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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
Provides the main savory flavor and the bulk of the filling.
Mashed potatoes
Adds body and moisture, helping the mixture hold together as cakes.
Beaten egg
Binds the mixture so the cakes keep their shape while frying.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, softening the texture of the filling.
Flour
Forms a dry coating that helps the outside brown during frying.

The step that matters

Changing the water while soaking the codfish. Repeatedly boiling the shredded fish in fresh water draws out salt. Stopping early leaves the cakes too salty, since the salt does not fully leach out.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, egg, 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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