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Fish Cake

A savory cake made from cold fish, bread crumbs, potatoes, and herbs, served with a fish gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley 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 Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Make the gravy

  1. Remove the meat from the bones of the fish, including the head and fins, and place them in a pot with the water.

  2. Add salt, pepper, onion, and herbs, then simmer slowly for about 2 hours to make gravy.

  3. Strain the gravy.

Form and fry the cake

  1. Finely chop the fish and mix it with equal parts of bread crumbs and cold potatoes, adding parsley and seasoning.

  2. Form the mixture into a cake using the beaten egg.

  3. Brush the top with egg.

  4. Coat the cake with bread crumbs.

  5. Fry the cake until light brown.

Finish and serve

  1. Pour the gravy over the cake.

  2. Simmer gently for 30 minutes, stirring carefully once or twice.

  3. Serve hot, garnished with thin slices of lemon and parsley.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cold fish
Provides the main body of the cake, shaped and held together with the other binders.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and give the cake body, and form a crisp outer coating when fried.
Cold potatoes
Add starch and body that help the mixture bind and stay moist when cooked.
Egg
Binds the mixture together and helps the coating set and brown.
Onion
Adds savory flavor to the fish gravy as it simmers.

The step that matters

Simmering the cake in gravy. Simmering gently keeps the cake intact and tender; vigorous boiling or rough stirring can break the bound mixture apart. Stirring only once or twice avoids this.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

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