Delicious Fish Balls
Take a quart of hot potatoes, freshly boiled, a cup of warmed fish picked very fine, one egg, the white and yellow beaten lightly separately, a teaspoonful of nice butter, a tablespoonful of fresh cream, add salt, red pepper, a little onion juice, and parsley chopped fine. Beat the whole to a light cream. Roll in balls and drop into plenty of very hot lard, like doughnuts, stirring them all the time.
A featherlight way to turn yesterday’s fish and a pot of potatoes into a hot, golden breakfast.
- “A quart of hot potatoes”That’s about 4 cups of freshly boiled potato, mashed while still hot so it stays fluffy — note how much more potato there is than fish.
- Beat the egg separatelyWhipping the white apart from the yolk and folding both in is what makes these light rather than dense; don’t skip it.
- “Red pepper” means cayenneA pinch of ground cayenne, not paprika; onion juice comes from grating an onion and squeezing out the liquid.
- Small measuresA teaspoon of butter and a tablespoon of cream are all it takes; the mixture should beat up to a soft, creamy paste.
- Deep-fry safely“Plenty of very hot lard” means deep fat at about 375°F; use a neutral oil today and fry in small batches so the balls don’t cool it down.
Fish balls belong to the thrifty genius of the nineteenth-century kitchen, where nothing edible was wasted. A little leftover cooked fish, stretched with far more potato, bound with an egg and fried crisp, made a hot and satisfying meal from scraps. In New England the dish became almost a ritual — codfish balls and baked beans were the classic Sunday-morning pairing — but versions traveled south and west with cooks and cookbooks. The trick, then as now, was lightness: enough potato and beaten egg to keep the fried ball tender inside its crackling shell.
From page 25 of the 1904 edition.
Original page from the book
