Codfish Balls
One cupful raw salt fish, one pint potatoes, one egg well beaten, quarter saltspoonful pepper, and more salt if needed, one teaspoonful of butter. Wash the fish, pick in half inch pieces, and free from bones. Pare potatoes and cut in quarters. Put fish and potatoes in stewpan, cover with boiling water. Boil twenty-five minutes, or until potatoes are soft. Do not allow potatoes to get soggy. Drain off all water, mash and beat until very light. Add butter and salt, and when slightly cooled the eggs, and more salt if needed. Shape them without smoothing much. Slip off into frying hot lard one minute. Fry only five at a time.
The New England Sunday-breakfast institution, built from the pantry staple that once ran the Atlantic economy: salt cod.
- Freshen the salt cod firstModern salt cod is very hard and salty; soak it several hours (or overnight), changing the water, before you measure your cupful — it is saltier than this old recipe assumes.
- “One pint potatoes”About 2 cups of pared, quartered potato, boiled right alongside the fish so the two mash together.
- A mere pinch of pepper“Quarter saltspoonful” is barely a pinch; add salt only after tasting, since the cod brings plenty of its own.
- Don’t let the potato go soggyThe recipe is emphatic: drain thoroughly and mash dry, or the balls won’t hold. Boil just until the potato yields, about 25 minutes.
- Fry hot, five at a timeSlip the shaped balls into deep fat (about 375°F, a neutral oil today) only a few at a time so the temperature stays high and they set fast, about a minute.
Salt cod was once the closest thing America had to money you could eat. Dried and salted, it kept for months, crossed oceans, and fed the triangular trade that built New England’s ports; Boston still hangs a gilded “Sacred Cod” in its statehouse in tribute. From that cheap, keeping protein came the codfish ball — soaked, flaked, bound with potato and fried — and its famous partnership with Boston baked beans on Sunday mornings. That a New Orleans cookbook carried the recipe shows how far the humble salt cod, and its rituals, had traveled.
From page 25 of the 1904 edition.
Original page from the book
