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Herring Balls

A dish of herring mixed with mashed potatoes, cream or butter, shaped into balls, breaded and fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 22,662 recipes. Both carry (e)-2-octenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Herring Balls

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Partly broil the herrings and remove the skin.

  2. Take all the meat from the bones.

Form the balls

  1. Mix the fish meat with an equal amount of mashed potatoes, and add cream or butter.

  2. Form the mixture into balls.

  3. Dip the balls in beaten egg and coat with bread crumbs.

Fry

  1. Fry in hot oil until golden 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. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  2. Potato + breadtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together434 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  3. Potato + creamtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  4. Cream + eggtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Cream + breadtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,789 recipes

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

Cream and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 42,166 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

Herrings
Provide the main flavour and protein that form the body of the meatball.
Mashed potatoes
Add moisture and starch that keep the mixture soft and cohesive.
Cream or butter
Adds fat and richness, softening the texture of the mixture.
Egg
Coats the balls and helps the crumbs adhere, while its proteins set and bind during cooking.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp outer crust that browns when fried.

The step that matters

Fry in hot oil until golden brown. Oil that is not hot enough lets the coated balls soak up grease and fall apart, while the crumb coating browns and crisps only at high temperature. Frying until golden brown also ensures the fish mixture is cooked through.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, egg, bread. 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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