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Codfish Balls, with Mustard Sauce

Codfish balls made from cod, potatoes, egg, and butter, served with mustard sauce.

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, with Mustard Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Place the potatoes in a pot and add the fish.

  2. Cover with boiling water and boil until the potatoes are tender.

Make the mixture

  1. Drain the water and mash the potatoes and fish together.

  2. Stir in the butter and the egg.

Fry and serve

  1. Drop spoonfuls of the mixture into hot fat and let them brown.

  2. Do not form into balls; leave each spoonful rough.

  3. Serve on a bed of watercress or on a napkin.

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. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Egg + potatotop 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

Salt cod
Provides the main flavour and savoury body of the fish balls.
Potatoes
Starch that becomes fluffy when mashed, giving the mixture its bulk and body.
Egg
Binds the mashed potato and fish so the spoonfuls hold together.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a softer texture in the mixture.

The step that matters

Drop spoonfuls into hot fat and let them brown. If the fat is not hot enough, the spoonfuls absorb oil and turn greasy instead of browning and crisping on the outside. Browning also develops flavour through the Maillard reaction.

Swap the potato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, butter. 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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