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Fish Balls

Fish balls made from cooked fish, mashed potatoes, milk, butter, flour, and fried in pork fat.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and pork are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,668 recipes. Both carry sotolon, which smells curry, maple. The science ↓

Fish Balls

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare the fish as previously described.

  2. Mash boiled potatoes, using a little more than half the amount of potato as fish.

Shape the balls

  1. Mix the fish and potatoes together, moisten with warm milk, and add a small piece of butter.

  2. Rub your hands with flour and form the mixture into small balls.

Fry

  1. Fry the balls in pork fat until 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. Potato + porktop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cooked fish
Provides the main body and flavour of the balls.
Boiled potatoes
Add starch and softness, binding the fish into a mixture that holds its shape.
Warm milk
Moistens the mixture so it stays tender rather than dry.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, contributing to a softer interior and flavour.
Flour
Dusts the hands so the mixture does not stick while shaping the balls.
Pork fat
Conducts heat for frying, helping the outside turn brown.

The step that matters

Frying until brown. Frying in hot fat browns the outside through the Maillard reaction, which adds flavour and a crisp surface. Too low a heat lets the balls soak up grease and turn pale, while too high a heat can scorch the outside before the centre is heated through.

“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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