Codfish Balls
2 cups salt codfish 1 cup potatoes, cut into cubes or small pieces 1/8 teaspoon pepper 1/2 tablespoon butter 1 egg Pick over and wash fish and shred into small pieces. Put potatoes into deep saucepan; cover with cold water; add fish and boil until potatoes are soft. Take off fire; drain well; beat up with wire whip or fork until light and all lumps are out and potatoes and fish are thoroughly mixed; add pepper and salt if necessary; add butter and egg which has been slightly beaten. Drop by spoonfuls into deep fat (hot enough to brown a piece of bread in 40 seconds) and fry until golden brown. Drain on brown paper and serve immediately.
A plain New England formula that assumes a kind of salt cod most kitchens no longer stock. Get the salt right and the rest is easy.
- The salt cod is the hingeThe "2 cups salt codfish" assumes the boxed, boneless salt codfish sold by grocers of the period, softer than a whole hard-dried plank; note that the recipe still has the cook shred it, and asks only that it be picked over and washed. A modern hard, bone-dry salt cod plank must be soaked 24-48 hours in the refrigerator with several changes of cold water before it goes anywhere near the pot, or the balls will be inedible.
- Measuring by cupTwo cups of shredded fish is roughly 8 oz by weight once soaked and flaked. One cup of cubed raw potato is about 5-6 oz, so the mix is fish-heavy by design; adding more potato gives a softer, blander ball.
- Fat temperatureBread browning in 40 seconds puts the fat at about 375F. Use a thermometer and keep it there; below 350F the balls absorb grease, above 400F they colour before the egg sets.
- Boil them together, then dry them outFish and potato go into the same water, so the potato takes on the flavour of the cod. After draining, returning the pan to low heat for a minute to steam off moisture before mashing helps; otherwise the mixture can be too loose to hold a spoonful.
- SaltThe instruction "add salt if necessary" is not a formality. Taste the mashed mixture before the egg goes in; well-soaked cod may need salt, under-soaked cod will need none at all.
- Don't overwork itBeat until smooth and light, then stop. Worked potato turns gluey, and the balls come out dense rather than shattering open.
- DrainingBrown paper meant plain wrapping or bag paper. A wire rack set over a tray works better than paper towel, which traps steam and softens the crust.
- YieldThe recipe gives no yield; expect a dozen or more walnut-sized balls depending on how large you drop them -- a dish for two or three.
Salt cod balls were a fixture of the New England breakfast table long before they reached a national cookbook, a direct legacy of the Atlantic salt-fish trade that made dried cod one of the few proteins that kept indefinitely in a pantry without ice. By the time this recipe was printed, the hard work had been industrialised: companies in Gloucester and Boston sold boneless shredded codfish in wooden boxes. The dish is also a thrift dish twice over, stretching a modest amount of fish with potato and frying scraps into something worth serving whole. Its appearance in a promotional cookbook of the kind put out by manufacturers of kitchen staples fits a familiar pattern, in which an advertised product was surrounded by a full household repertoire.