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Fish Croquettes

A fried fish croquette made with boiled fish, onion, butter, flour, milk, stock, seasonings, and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Fish Croquettes

Why it works: Onion and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,259 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Fish Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Stew the chopped onion in melted butter for 10 minutes.

  2. Rub in the flour and stir briskly for a moment.

  3. Add hot milk and fish or meat stock, then let it boil for 5 minutes.

Season and bind

  1. Stir in salt, ground mustard, Worcestershire sauce, cayenne pepper, and nutmeg.

  2. Add the beaten egg yolks, then the fish, stirring well for a few minutes.

Shape and serve

  1. Shape the mixture into croquettes, fry them, and serve with a cream sauce.

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. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Fish + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold boiled fish
Forms the main body and flavour of the croquettes.
Flour
Thickens the milk and stock into a binding base with the butter.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help the mixture set and hold its shape when cooked.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and carries the onion flavour into the base.
Hot milk
Creates a smooth, creamy sauce base that thickens with the flour.

The step that matters

Stirring in the egg yolks. Egg yolks set when heated, so they bind the mixture. Adding them to a very hot base can scramble them, so stir them in steadily and keep the mixture moving until evenly combined.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, butter, flour, milk, mustard, sauce, pepper):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Horseradishfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, butter, flour, milk, mustard, sauce, pepper. 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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