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Fish Croquettes or Cutlets

Fish croquettes made with cooked fish, milk, butter, flour, egg, breadcrumbs, and fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Fish and anchovy work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 637 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Fish Croquettes or Cutlets

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Melt the butter in a pan over medium heat.

  2. Add the flour and milk, stirring until boiling.

  3. Cook thoroughly, then add the finely flaked fish, anchovy essence, and seasoning.

  4. Transfer to a plate and let it cool completely.

Shape and fry

  1. Divide into 8 or 9 pieces and form into croquettes.

  2. Dip each croquette in egg, then coat with breadcrumbs.

  3. 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. Fish + anchovytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together637 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Anchovy + eggtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,330 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + anchovytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,697 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

Flour
Cooked with butter and milk, it thickens the mixture so the croquettes hold their shape.
Butter
Fat that enriches the base and helps it set smoothly with the flour.
Egg
Coats the croquettes so breadcrumbs adhere and form a crisp outer layer.
Milk
Liquid that, heated with flour, forms a thick binding base for the fish.

The step that matters

Cool the base completely before shaping. A warm, loose base is soft and sticky, so croquettes may slump or split in the oil. Chilling firms the starch and fat so each piece keeps its shape while frying.

“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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