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Fish Balls
One pint salt codfish picked up very fine, and two pints raw potatoes, put together in cold water and boiled until well cooked, then drain and mash with a potato-masher, add a piece of butter size of an egg, one or two well-beaten eggs and a little pepper; mix well with a wooden spoon, have frying pan ready with boiling lard, into which drop a spoonful of the mixture and fry until brown. Do not freshen the fish before boiling, and do not make into cakes or balls.
— Mrs. Chas. E. Nichols
A plain New England salt-cod cake, notable for two firm instructions: do not soak the fish first, and do not shape the mixture. Both are deliberate, and both change how it turns out.
- The hinge: drop, don't shapeThe mixture is dropped from a spoon into the fat rather than formed, which gives a ragged, light ball rather than a dense patty.
- "Do not freshen the fish"Freshening means soaking salt cod in cold water to draw out the salt. Here the boiling water with the potatoes does that job, and the potatoes absorb the salt. Modern salt cod varies enormously in cure — heavily salted dried planks genuinely need a soak, while the softer, wetter salt cod sold in tubs does not. Taste a pinch of the boiled mash before adding eggs and adjust.
- Pints of fish and potatoBoth are volume measures of prepared ingredients: about 2 cups of finely picked cod, which may weigh anywhere from about 5 to 8 oz depending on how loosely it packs, and 4 cups of raw peeled potato cut small, roughly 1 1/4 lb. Cut the potato into even pieces so it finishes with the fish.
- Butter the size of an eggAbout 2 oz, or 4 tablespoons.
- Frying fatLard works well and is still sold, but any neutral fat with a high smoke point does. "Boiling lard" means hot fat, not literally boiling: 365–375F. Below that the balls soak up grease; much above it and they brown before the inside sets.
- Drain them dryAfter boiling, drain the fish and potato thoroughly and let the steam escape for a minute before mashing. Residual water makes the mixture spit in the fat and fall apart.
- Pepper onlyNo salt is added, and none should be needed — the cod supplies it. A little grated onion or chopped parsley appears in some period versions if you want it.
- YieldDepends on the size of the spoonful; walnut-sized balls will give two dozen or more, serving four to six. Commonly a breakfast dish in New England, often with brown bread.
Salt cod was the great pantry protein of the American Northeast long before refrigeration, cheap and keeping for long periods on a shelf, and codfish balls became so fixed a Sunday-morning institution in New England that they turn up in many regional community cookbooks of the late nineteenth century. A collection like this one shows how far inland the habit travelled: dried cod moved easily by rail and wagon into towns nowhere near the coast, where fresh fish was a rarity but a wooden box of salt cod was ordinary grocery stock. The insistence on dropping the mixture loose from a spoon rather than forming cakes is often said to mark the older style. Contributor-signed entries like Mrs. Nichols's were the point of these books hink a a common thing, arguments about shaping and soaking included.