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Fish Cakes

Fish cakes made with cooked fish, stale bread, butter, egg, pepper, salt, and mace, then fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Fish Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. Soak stale bread in milk until soft, squeeze out milk, and beat until smooth.

  2. Remove skin and bones from fish and add to bread mixture.

  3. Melt butter and add to mixture with beaten egg, then mix well.

Shape and fry

  1. Sprinkle bread crumbs on a board and form mixture into small cakes.

  2. Brush cakes with beaten egg, cover with bread crumbs, and fry in hot oil 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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

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

  4. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + macetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

Pepper and mace barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 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

Cooked fish
Forms the bulk of the cakes and gives them their main flavor.
Stale bread
Soaked and beaten, it binds the mixture and keeps the cakes moist.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, softening the texture of the cakes.
Egg
Binds the mixture together and, brushed on, helps the crumb coating stick.

The step that matters

Forming and coating the cakes. The mixture is soft and wet, so cakes can fall apart. Chilling the fish helps it hold its shape. Coating with egg and crumbs before frying creates a crisp, golden crust that protects the interior.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, bread, butter, egg, 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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