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Codfish Balls

Codfish balls are made from leftover codfish, potatoes, bread, butter, spices, and sweet cream, then rolled in flour and fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Sage and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,485 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Codfish Balls

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mixture

  1. Mash the codfish, potatoes, and grated bread together in a pan.

  2. Season with butter, black pepper, sage, and thyme.

  3. Moisten the mixture with sweet cream until it can be formed into balls.

Fry

  1. Roll the balls in flour.

  2. Fry in boiling lard until very 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. Sage + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,485 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Pepper + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

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

  4. Potato + thymetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,586 recipes

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

  5. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Leftover codfish
Provides the main flavor and body of the balls.
Leftover potatoes
Adds starch that binds the mixture and gives a soft interior.
Bread
Soaks up moisture and helps the mixture hold together when formed.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries the seasoning.
Sweet cream
Adds moisture so the mixture can be shaped into balls.

The step that matters

Fry in boiling lard until very brown. The lard must be hot enough to brown the flour coating quickly. If the fat is too cool, the balls absorb oil, turn greasy, and cook through before browning.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, butter, pepper, sage, thyme, cream, flour):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, pepper, sage, thyme, cream, 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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