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Codfish Balls

A fried ball made from leftover codfish, potatoes, and bread, seasoned with butter, pepper, sage, and thyme.

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 leftover codfish, potatoes, and grated bread together in a pan.

  2. Season the mixture with butter, pepper, sage, and thyme.

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

Shape and 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 savory flavour and body of the balls.
Leftover potatoes
Adds starch and bulk, helping the mixture hold together when shaped.
Grated bread
Absorbs moisture and helps bind the mixture into shapes.
Sweet cream
Adds moisture so the mixture can be formed into balls.
Flour
Forms a dry coating that helps the outside brown when fried.

The step that matters

Fry in boiling lard until very brown. The lard must be hot enough to brown the outside quickly. If it is too cool, the balls absorb more fat and turn greasy before they brown.

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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