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Fish Balls

Fish balls made from shredded fish, mashed potatoes, and a butter‑egg batter, then fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Fish Balls

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Break the cold fish into pieces with a fork, removing all bones and skin, and shred it very fine.

  2. Add an equal quantity of mashed potatoes to the fish.

  3. Make a stiff batter by mixing in butter, milk, and the beaten egg.

Shape and fry

  1. Flour your hands and shape the mixture into balls.

  2. Fry the balls in boiling lard or drippings until they are light 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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Whitefish + turbottop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1 recipe

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

Cold fish
Provides the main body and flavor of the balls.
Mashed potatoes
Adds bulk and softness, helping the mixture hold together.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture to the batter.
Milk
Moistens the batter so it binds smoothly.
Egg
Binds the mixture so the balls hold their shape while frying.

The step that matters

Fry in boiling fat. The fat must be hot enough to brown the outside quickly. If it is too cool, the balls absorb grease and turn heavy and soggy before they set.

Swap the potato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, whitefish, turbot, butter, milk, 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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