Skip to main content
Main

Codfish-balls

Small round cakes made from minced codfish, bread crumbs, egg, butter, and seasonings, fried until browned.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and sage match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,388 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Codfish-balls

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Mince the salt cod and roll it into small round cakes, flattening them slightly.

  2. Dip each cake into a mixture of beaten egg and flour.

  3. Fry in hot pork fat until browned on both sides, turning once.

  4. Wet the bread crumbs in water.

  5. Mix in the egg, butter, salt, pepper, and sage.

  6. Fill the fish cakes with the dressing before frying.

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. Pepper + sagetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  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. Sage + porktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,527 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  5. Fish + porktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together668 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

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

What each ingredient does

Salt cod
Forms the main body of the cakes and supplies their fish flavour.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and bulk out the mixture so the cakes hold together.
Egg
Binds the mixture and helps the coating set and brown during frying.
Butter
Adds fat for richer flavour and a softer, moister interior.
Pork fat
Conducts heat to brown the outside and give a crisp, golden crust.

The step that matters

Fry in hot pork fat until browned on both sides. The fat must be hot enough to sear the coating quickly. If it is too cool, the cakes soak up grease, become heavy, and can fall apart before the crust sets.

Swap the sage

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Sagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, bread, egg, butter, pepper, pork. 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.

More codfish balls recipes

Salt 3 See all 201 →

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesFried FishFried Fish120 recipesPork CakePork Cake107 recipesRoast PorkRoast Pork82 recipes