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Codfish Balls with Rice
One pine of codfish, two pints of potatoes, one cup of boiled rice, one tablespoon of fat, two beaten eggs, three teaspoons of milk. Mix together and make into balls and fry in deep fat. Serve hot.
A thrifty salt-cod cake stretched with rice, written in the shorthand of a cook who assumed you already knew the drill. The recipe omits two whole steps — freshening the fish and cooking the potatoes — so read it as a ratio rather than a method.
- "One pine" is a typoRead it as one pint of prepared codfish, measured after shredding — perhaps 8 to 10 oz once soaked and flaked, if (as the name suggests) salt cod is meant. Pints of solids were a normal way to measure fish and potato in this period.
- The fish must be freshened firstIf this is salt cod, it would have been hard, board-dry and heavily salted. Soak it 12 to 24 hours in several changes of cold water, then simmer gently until it flakes and drain well. Skipping this makes the balls inedibly salty; the recipe is silent on the step.
- Potatoes are boiled and mashedTwo pints means about 1 lb 8 oz of potatoes, boiled, drained dry and mashed without milk or butter beyond what is listed. Wet mash will not hold a ball in deep fat.
- Rice as a binderA cup of cooked rice, well drained and cooled, keeps the interior light. Warm or sticky rice makes the mixture slack; chill the whole mixture 30 minutes before shaping.
- Fat and frying temperatureThe tablespoon of fat goes into the mixture, not the pan. Fry in deep fat at 365F, a few at a time, until deep gold — about 3 to 4 minutes. Cooler fat and the balls drink oil and fall apart.
- Milk in teaspoonsThree teaspoons is a very small amount, probably no more than enough to loosen the eggs. If the mix feels dry enough to crack, add a little more mashed potato rather than more liquid.
- SeasoningNo salt or pepper is listed; any salt would have to come from the fish itself. Fry one test ball, then adjust pepper before shaping the rest.
- YieldSomething over twenty golf-ball-sized cakes, serving 5 or 6 as a main course with pickles or a tomato sauce.
Salt cod balls are often said to be among New England's most durable breakfast dishes, born of the cod fishery that built Gloucester and Marblehead and of the barrel of dried fish that sat in the pantry year-round because it kept without ice. Adding boiled rice is the frugal move: it bulks out expensive fish and uses up the previous day's leftovers. The same mixture bound with egg and fried in deep fat appears under a number of names — codfish cakes, fish balls, and, some would add, brandade fritters — across the North Atlantic wherever dried cod was traded.