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Fish Balls a LA Norris

Fish balls à la Norris are small fish pieces mixed with milk, butter, flour, herbs, and spices, then formed into balls and served.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,810 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Fish Balls a LA Norris

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter and stir in the flour until well blended.

  2. Add the milk and cook, stirring constantly, until the mixture leaves the bottom and sides of the pan.

  3. Stir in the parsley, celery salt, nutmeg, salt, pepper, and fish; mix well.

Shape and serve

  1. Form the mixture into balls without using flour.

  2. Arrange the balls down the center of a dish garnished with a puree of peas and potatoes.

  3. Garnish with parsley.

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. Parsley + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Parsley + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

Fish
Provides the main body and flavour of the balls.
Flour
Thickens the butter and milk into a binding sauce that holds the balls together.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that cooks into a thick, creamy binder.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavour and softens the mixture.

The step that matters

Cooking the milk and flour until it leaves the pan. Cooking the mixture with constant stirring lets the starch swell and thicken the milk. If it is undercooked, the mixture stays loose and the balls will not hold their shape.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, milk, butter, flour, parsley, nutmeg, pepper):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, milk, butter, flour, parsley, nutmeg, pepper. 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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