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Croquettes of Fish

A fried fish patty coated in breadcrumbs, served with lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Croquettes of Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Heat the cream in a saucepan until nearly boiling.

  2. Pour the hot cream over the cold fish pieces and season with pepper and nutmeg. Mix well and let it cool, then form the mixture into small cakes.

Coat and fry

  1. Dust the cakes with bread crumbs, dip them in the beaten egg, and coat again with more bread crumbs.

  2. Fry the cakes in hot oil until golden brown.

Serve

  1. Arrange the croquettes in a pyramid on a napkin in a dish and garnish with fried parsley.

  2. Serve with halved lemons on the side.

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. Nutmeg + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Peas + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together804 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexyl acetate (fruity, apple).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold fish
Forms the main body of the croquettes and gives them their flavour.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness to the fish mixture, keeping the cakes tender.
Beaten egg
Acts as a binder so the bread crumb coating sticks to the cakes.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp golden coating that browns when fried.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool before shaping. Warm, loose fish mixture is soft and hard to shape, and it can fall apart in the hot oil. Cooling lets it firm up so the cakes hold their form while frying.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Walnutfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Beansfits about as well
  4. Peasthe original

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