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Fish Croquettes

A fried fish croquette made with boiled fish, cream, eggs, and seasonings, coated in breadcrumbs.

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

Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Fish Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add the flour and mix thoroughly.

  3. Stir in the cream, then add the onion, pepper, lemon juice, salt, egg yolks, fish, and parsley.

  4. Spread the mixture on a dish to cool.

Shape and fry

  1. Shape into croquettes.

  2. Dip each croquette in bread crumbs, then in the egg mixture, and again in bread crumbs.

  3. Fry in boiling fat until golden brown.

Serve

  1. Serve with Bechamel or Hollandaise 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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

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

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Boiled fish
Forms the main body of the croquettes and provides their flavour.
Flour
Thickens the cream with the melted butter, giving the mixture body so it holds its shape.
Egg yolks
Bind the mixture and help it set firm when cooked.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, keeping the filling soft inside.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden coating that browns when fried.

The step that matters

Spread the mixture on a dish to cool. The mixture must be cool and firm enough to handle before shaping. Shaping a warm, soft mixture makes croquettes that slump or break apart in the hot fat.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, pepper, lemon, cream, butter, flour, egg):

  1. Spinachfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, pepper, lemon, cream, butter, flour, 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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