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Fish Balls
Soak over night three-quarters of a pound of boneless codfish. In the morning shred the fish with a silver fork until it is fine. Add a dozen potatoes, small size, freshly boiled, mashed very fine. Two beaten eggs, a tablespoonful of butter, a little hot cream, and white pepper. Mould into balls, and drop in very hot fat and fry to an amber color.
A standard New England salt-cod breakfast dish, written for cooks who kept a box of dried cod in the pantry as a matter of course. Two things decide whether it works: how thoroughly the fish is soaked, and how dry the potato is.
- "Boneless codfish" means salt codNot fresh fish. Dried salt cod, sold in slabs or boxes, is what the overnight soak is for. Soak it in plenty of cold water in the refrigerator, changing the water two or three times; a thick piece may want 24 hours. Taste a shred before proceeding — if it is still aggressively salty, keep soaking.
- Do not add saltThe recipe seasons only with white pepper, and deliberately so. Even well-soaked cod carries plenty of salt into the mixture, and the butter adds more. Season at the end if at all.
- A dozen small potatoesGenuinely vague. If "small size" is taken as something like egg-sized, that is perhaps 1½ to 2 lb, which would put the potato at roughly two to two and a half times the weight of the (unsoaked) fish. Err toward less potato if you want the fish to taste of anything.
- Keep the potato dryBoil the potatoes whole in their skins, peel them hot, and mash or rice them without milk. Waterlogged potato makes a slack mixture that slumps in the fat. The "little hot cream" is there to loosen a stiff mash, not to wet a soft one — add it by the spoonful, and only if needed.
- The silver forkShredding with a fork rather than chopping keeps the cod in fibres, which is what gives the balls their texture. Silver was probably specified because carbon steel of the period was liable to discolour or taint on contact with salt fish; any modern fork is fine.
- Fat temperatureThe recipe only says "very hot". By modern practice that means around 375F for deep frying. Below that the balls soak fat and fall apart; much above and they colour before the centre heats through. Fry in small batches so the temperature holds.
- Shaping and handlingChill the mixture for half an hour before moulding — cold balls hold together far better. This recipe says to mould them; around 1½ inches across is the usual size.
- YieldRoughly a couple of dozen small balls, though the recipe gives no yield or number of servings. Serve hot; baked beans is the traditional New England pairing.
Salt cod fishcakes were breakfast in New England for generations before any cookbook bothered to write them down, and the pairing of fish balls with baked beans on Sunday morning — the beans having sat in the oven since Saturday night — is one of the more durable regional habits in American cooking. Dried cod was the region's great export commodity and its cheapest winter protein, keeping for months without ice and reconstituting into something substantial. By the time this book appeared, boneless cod was being sold ready-shredded in wooden boxes, which may be why the recipe can specify weight rather than describing how to bone a whole dried fish. The insistence on a silver fork is a small period marker: cheap steel cutlery reacted with the salt and brine.