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Fish Croquettes

Fish croquettes made from flaked fish mixed with white sauce, seasoned, shaped, breaded, fried, and served with parsley and lemon wedges.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Fish Croquettes

Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Fish Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Season the fish with salt and white pepper, then add the white sauce and cool.

  2. Shape the mixture into chops, cylinders, or balls.

Coat and fry

  1. Roll each piece in breadcrumbs, then dip in egg, and roll in breadcrumbs again.

  2. Fry in deep oil until golden brown.

Serve

  1. Arrange on a hot dish for serving and garnish with parsley and lemon wedges.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. White pepper + parsleytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  3. Fish + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,889 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. White pepper + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,658 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Fish + parsleytop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Cold flaked fish
Forms the main body and flavor of the croquettes.
White sauce
Binds the flaked fish together and keeps the mixture moist.
Breadcrumbs
Form a crisp, golden crust when fried.
Egg
Helps the breadcrumbs stick to the shaped pieces and sets to hold the coating.

The step that matters

Cool the mixture before shaping. A warm white sauce keeps the fish mixture soft and sticky, so the pieces can lose their shape or break apart in the hot oil. Cooling firms the mixture so it holds together when shaped and fried.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, sauce, egg, parsley, lemon):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Dillfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, sauce, egg, parsley, lemon. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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