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Fish Cakes

Fish cakes made with cold fish, potatoes, parsley, egg, and breadcrumbs, then fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Fish Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mash the potatoes in a bowl.

  2. Remove skin and bones from the fish, then break it into small pieces.

  3. Finely chop the parsley and add it to the bowl.

Shape and coat

  1. Mix the fish, potatoes, parsley, pepper, and salt together, then bind with the egg.

  2. Shape the mixture into cakes.

  3. Coat each cake with egg and bread crumbs.

Fry

  1. Fry the cakes in hot fat until golden brown.

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.

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 + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Potato + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,855 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

  4. Fish + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold potatoes
Mashed potatoes give the cakes bulk and a soft, tender interior.
Egg
Binds the fish and potato mixture so the cakes hold their shape.
Cold fish
Forms the main body of the cakes and gives them their flavour.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden coating when the cakes are fried.

The step that matters

Fry the cakes in hot fat. Fat that is hot enough sears the coated surface quickly, forming a crisp, golden crust that seals in moisture. Cold fat lets the crumbs soak up oil and the cakes fall apart or turn greasy.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Shallotfits about as well
  3. Carrotfits about as well
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, egg, parsley, pepper, bread. 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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