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Fish Balls

Fish balls are small, flat cakes made from minced salt fish and mashed potatoes, fried until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Fish and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,488 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Fish Balls

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove all bones and skin from the boiled salt fish and mince it finely.

  2. Mash the boiled potatoes until smooth; use more potato than fish for better binding.

Shape the cakes

  1. Combine the fish and potatoes, adding butter and mixing well.

  2. Optionally, add a beaten egg.

  3. Flour your hands and shape the mixture into small flat cakes.

  4. Dredge the cakes in flour.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry the cakes in boiling hot oil or drippings until golden brown.

  2. Remove with a skimmer and drain on a strainer.

  3. Serve on a hot platter.

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

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

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

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

  4. Fish + potatotop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together134 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  5. Potato + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,355 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Boiled potatoes
Mashed potato gives the mixture body and helps the cakes hold together.
Salt fish
Provides the main flavor and the flaky body of the cakes.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture to the mixture.
Egg
Acts as a binder that helps the cakes set and hold their shape.
Flour
Forms a dry outer coating that browns during frying.

The step that matters

Frying in hot oil. The oil must be boiling hot so the flour coating crisps and browns quickly. If the oil is too cool, the cakes absorb grease and can fall apart or turn soggy.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, butter, egg, flour. 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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