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 ↓
Cod-fish Balls
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the cod
Cut the codfish into pieces and soak in lukewarm water for 1 hour.
Remove the bones and skin, then shred the fish into fine pieces.
Place the fish in a pot with cold water and bring to a boil. Change the water and repeat this process once more.
Make the mixture
Boil the potatoes until tender, then mash them while still hot, adding butter.
Mix equal parts codfish and mashed potatoes while both are still hot.
Form the mixture into small balls or thick flat cakes.
Fry
Fry in hot butter in a sauté pan or immerse in boiling lard.
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.
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Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked 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 flavor and the flaky, savory body of the fritters.
- Potatoes
- Bind the fish together and give the balls a soft, tender interior.
- Butter
- Adds richness and flavor to the mashed potato and browns the outside during frying.
The step that matters
Boiling the codfish in changed water. Soaking and repeated boiling in fresh water draw out excess salt from the dried cod. If the fish is not desalted enough, the fritters will taste too salty, and the mixture may be harder to shape.
“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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