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Codfish Balls

A savory dish of mashed potatoes mixed with flaked codfish, shaped 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 ↓

Codfish Balls

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the codfish and potatoes

  1. Pare potatoes and cut them into thick slices.

  2. Soak the codfish and potatoes in water overnight.

  3. In the morning, drain the water and boil the potatoes until soft but not mushy.

  4. Pick over the codfish and discard any hard bits.

Mix and shape

  1. Drain the potatoes, then beat them together with the codfish using a large fork.

  2. Mix in the butter, and once slightly cool, add the beaten egg and seasonings.

  3. Mold the mixture into round or oval shapes and fry in deep, hot lard.

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).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Potato + eggtop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,978 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Provide starch and bulk that give the balls their soft, fluffy interior.
Codfish
Supplies the main savoury flavour and firm, flaky texture to the mixture.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, softening the mixture and carrying flavour.
Egg
Binds the mixture so the balls hold their shape while frying.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool slightly before adding the egg. If the mixture is still very hot, the egg can scramble and lose its binding power, so the balls may fall apart when fried.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Leekfits about as well
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, egg. 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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