Skip to main content
Main

Codfish Balls

Codfish Balls are fried balls made from mashed potatoes and codfish mixed with butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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

  1. Soak the codfish in cold water.

  2. Heat the codfish until warm.

  3. Drain the codfish and repeat soaking with cold water until the fish is fresh.

Make the balls

  1. Mash the potatoes while they are hot and mix with the codfish, using two-thirds potatoes and one-third fish.

  2. Add plenty of butter to the mixture and form into balls.

Fry

  1. Heat lard in a pan until hot, then 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 main savory flavor and the flaky texture of the balls.
Potatoes
Bind the fish together and give the balls a soft, tender body.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture to the mixture.

The step that matters

Repeat soaking the codfish until fresh. Salted cod must be soaked long enough to remove excess salt and rehydrate the flesh. Under-soaked fish makes the balls overly salty and firm, so tasting and changing the water until the fish is fresh matters for the final flavor.

“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.

More codfish balls recipes

Salt 3 See all 201 →

You might also like

Potato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesPotato RollsPotato Rolls78 recipesPotato ChipsPotato Chips53 recipesSweet Potato CroquettesSweet Potato Croquettes53 recipes