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Cod-Fish Balls
Take about one pound of cold cooked salt cod-fish, and remove all skin and bone. Chop double the quantity of cold boiled potatoes, and mix them with the fish. Add a table-spoonful of melted butter and a well-beaten egg. Mould into round balls, flour lightly, and fry till brown in boiling lard. Probable cost, 8d.
A frugal use for leftover salt cod and boiled potatoes, and it still works — provided the fish has been properly soaked before it was cooked in the first place.
- Salt cod needs soaking firstThe recipe assumes "cold cooked salt cod-fish" already in the larder. If you start from a dried salted fillet, soak it 24-48 hours in the refrigerator with three or four changes of water, then poach it gently until it flakes. Skip this and the balls will be inedibly salty.
- ProportionsOne pound of picked fish to two pounds of cooked potato by the original's "double the quantity" reading. That is a potato-forward cake; many cooks prefer closer to equal weights for a stronger fish flavour. Add no salt until you have tasted the mix.
- Potato textureChop or coarsely mash rather than whipping. Overworked potato turns gluey and the balls slump in the fat. Floury potatoes (russet, Maris Piper) bind better than waxy.
- Binding and chillingOne egg and a tablespoon of melted butter is the whole binder, so the mixture must be dry. Chill the moulded balls 30 minutes before frying; warm, damp balls are the usual cause of them breaking apart in the pan.
- "Boiling lard"Lard does not boil — the phrase means fat hot enough to seethe when the food goes in, about 350-365F. Any neutral oil with a high smoke point works. Fry in small batches so the temperature does not crash.
- YieldDepends on how large you roll them: about three pounds of mixture will give roughly 20 balls of golf-ball size, or close to twice that number at walnut size. Serve with lemon or a sharp tomato sauce.
- Cost note"Probable cost, 8d" is eightpence in pre-decimal British currency, a marker of how cheap salt cod and potatoes were.
Salt cod was the ballast of the North Atlantic economy for centuries: split, salted and dried, it travelled without refrigeration and turned up everywhere from Lisbon to New England to the industrial towns of Victorian Britain. The technique — bind a cooked leftover with potato and egg, shape, fry — is a pattern rather than a single dish, and the same formula produced fish cakes from any cold remnant. Codfish balls became particularly associated with the New England breakfast table, where they are often said to have been a Sunday-morning fixture. The eightpence costing reflects Cassell's persistent interest in what a dish would set back a household of modest means.