Skip to main content
Main

Fish Balls

Fish balls made from finely chopped fish mixed with bread, parsley, pepper, salt, butter, and egg, then fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Fish Balls

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the fish very small.

  2. Add grated bread, parsley, pepper, coarse sea salt, butter, and the egg.

  3. Mix all ingredients well.

Shape and fry

  1. Form the mixture into balls.

  2. Fry the balls until 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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Fish + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Fish + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 recipes

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

  5. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 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

Fish
Forms the main body of the balls and gives them their flavour.
Egg
Binds the mixture so the balls hold their shape while frying.
Grated bread
Absorbs moisture and helps give the mixture a firmer, less wet texture.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and helps the surface brown during frying.

The step that matters

Fry the balls until brown. Frying over steady heat browns the outside through Maillard reactions while the inside cooks through. Too high a heat burns the outside before the centre sets, and too low a heat leaves the balls greasy and pale.

“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 fish balls recipes

Cod 40Salt 10Boston 6Cornmeal 3 See all 109 →

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesFried FishFried Fish120 recipesFish CroquettesFish Croquettes81 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipes