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Cod Fish Balls
1 cup fish. 2 cups Irish potatoes. 2 eggs. 2 tablespoons butter. 3 spoons cream. Dust of pepper.
Soak fish over night. Pick to pieces, add potatoes creamed, eggs beaten slightly and butter. Roll into balls and fry.
A salt cod recipe, though the original never says so — the overnight soak is the tell. Everything hinges on how thoroughly you draw the salt out and how dry the potato is.
- "1 cup fish" means salt codDried salt cod, soaked overnight in several changes of cold water, then drained and flaked. How much dry cod you need for a cup of soaked, picked fish varies with the cut and how heavily it was salted; half a pound or so is a reasonable starting point. Taste a shred before you mix: if it is still aggressively salty, soak longer.
- Irish potatoesSimply white potatoes, as distinguished from sweet potatoes — a common American usage into the twentieth century. Use a starchy potato, boiled and riced or mashed dry, with no added milk beyond the cream called for here.
- "Creamed" potatoesIn this period the word means mashed smooth, not the modern sauced dish. Mash them while hot and let the steam escape before combining; wet potato is the main cause of balls that collapse in the fat.
- "3 spoons cream"Genuinely ambiguous — probably tablespoons, given that butter is measured that way on the line immediately before. Start with two tablespoons and add more only if the mixture will not hold together.
- No saltThe recipe calls for none, only a dust of pepper; the cod is presumably expected to carry the seasoning, which is another reason to taste the soaked fish before you commit.
- Chill before fryingNot in the original, but the mixture shapes far better after thirty minutes in the refrigerator. Roll into balls about 1½ inches across.
- FryingThe recipe says only "fry". If deep-frying, around 365F for two to three minutes, until deep gold, will brown them and set the egg through. They can also be flattened into cakes and pan-fried in butter or bacon fat.
- YieldRoughly twelve to fourteen balls at 1½ inches, depending on size: enough for three or four as a main course with eggs, or a larger number as an appetizer.
Salt cod balls are New England breakfast food, and their persistence in cookbooks well into the 1920s reflects how long dried cod remained a household staple rather than a specialty item — it kept for months in a dry pantry and traveled anywhere, which is why the Atlantic cod fishery underwrote so much of colonial New England's trade. The pairing of cooked potato with reconstituted fish marks the recipe as thrift cookery: Mrs. Wilson wrote for wartime and postwar households, and much of her work is organized around using what is already in the kitchen.