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Cod-Fish Balls
One-forth fish, to three-fourths potatoes, eggs enough to moisten. Season with pepper and salt, and fry brown.
Barely more than a ratio, which is how experienced cooks wrote about a dish they made every week. The proportions are sound; everything else has to be supplied.
- The fish is salt codThe fish is probably salt cod -- the recipe names no kind, but dried salt cod was the usual keeping fish in an 1870s inland kitchen. If salt cod, it needs soaking (commonly 12 to 24 hours) in several changes of cold water, then simmering gently until it flakes, drained and shredded fine, with bones and any skin picked out.
- Reading the ratio"One-forth" is a printer's slip for one-fourth. Work by volume of prepared ingredients: about 1 cup flaked cooked fish to 3 cups mashed potato makes roughly 12 balls, enough for four.
- Potatoes dry, not creamyBoil or bake the potatoes and mash them without milk or butter. Wet mash is the usual reason these fall apart in the fat. The mixture should hold a shape when pressed in the palm.
- "Eggs enough to moisten"One egg for the quantity above, two at most. Too much egg makes the interior soufflé-like and loose rather than binding it.
- Salt with careSeason only after tasting. Depending on how long the cod soaked, the mixture may need no added salt at all.
- FryingThe recipe says only "fry brown." Lard or drippings would have been the likely fat; a modern equivalent is shallow fat about half an inch deep at roughly 350 to 365F, turning once, three to four minutes total. Chilling the shaped balls before frying helps them keep their form.
- ServingGenerally a breakfast dish. The recipe specifies nothing; serve very hot.
Salt cod was one of the great commodities of the Atlantic trade, and it reached inland Virginia in wooden boxes — cheap, keepable protein that needed no ice. Codfish balls belong to the wider American habit of turning yesterday's fish and potatoes into a breakfast fry, a habit shared with New England fish cakes and with the salt-cod fritters of the Caribbean and Iberia. That this entry in Housekeeping in Old Virginia (1879) gives a proportion and nothing else is characteristic of the book: Marion Cabell Tyree collected contributions from many Virginia housekeepers, and they wrote for readers who already knew how to soak a fish and heat a skillet.