Skip to main content
Main

Herring Balls

A fried ball of herring, mashed potatoes, butter, and cream, coated in breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Herring Balls

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Partly boil the bloaters or herrings and remove the skin.

  2. Take all the meat from the bones and mix it with the mashed potatoes.

Shape and coat

  1. Add the butter and enough cream to soften the mixture.

  2. Form the mixture into balls.

  3. Roll the balls in beaten egg and then in bread crumbs.

Fry

  1. Fry in lard or butter 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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Butter + potatotop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

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

  4. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Bloaters or red herrings
Provide the main flavour and the body of the balls.
Mashed potatoes
Bind the fish and add bulk so the mixture holds together.
Cream
Adds moisture and softens the mixture for easier shaping.
Butter
Adds richness and fat for flavour and a softer texture.
Eggs
Bind the coating so the bread crumbs stick to the balls.

The step that matters

Softening the mixture with cream. Too little cream leaves the mixture stiff and hard to shape, while too much makes it slack and likely to fall apart in the pan. Add it gradually until the mixture just holds its shape.

Swap the potato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, butter, 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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesPotato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesPotato RollsPotato Rolls78 recipes