Skip to main content
Main

Fish Cake

A fish cake made by mixing minced fish with breadcrumbs, herbs, egg white, and butter, then frying.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the gravy

  1. Remove the flesh from the fish and set aside.

  2. Place the heads, bones, and fins in a pot with a little water.

  3. Season with herbs, pepper, and coarse sea salt, then simmer to make gravy.

Make the fish cakes

  1. Finely mince the fish flesh and mix with 1/3 cup bread crumbs, parsley, pepper, and coarse sea salt.

  2. Add the egg white and melted butter, mixing well.

  3. Shape the mixture into a cake and coat with bread crumbs.

  4. Fry in hot oil until pale 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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

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

  5. Bread + eggtop 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

Fish
Provides the main body and flavour of the cake.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and help bind the mixture while coating the outside.
Egg white
Binds the minced fish together so the cake holds its shape.
Melted butter
Adds fat for richer flavour and softer texture inside the cake.

The step that matters

Frying in hot oil until pale brown. Hot oil quickly sets the coating and browns the surface, so the cake stays intact and does not absorb excess oil. Oil that is not hot enough lets the cake soak up grease and fall apart.

“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.

More fish cake recipes

Baked 3 See all 11 →

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesFried FishFried Fish120 recipesFish CroquettesFish Croquettes81 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipes