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Fish Croquettes

Fish croquettes are small fried balls made from boiled fish, parsley, pepper, salt, flour, egg, milk, and cracker crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Fish Croquettes

Why it works: Parsley and pepper 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 Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Remove all bones from the boiled fish and chop it finely.

  2. Mix the chopped fish with parsley, pepper, and coarse sea salt.

Shape and coat

  1. In a bowl, combine flour, 1 egg, and a little milk to make a batter.

  2. Form the fish mixture into balls, then roll them in the batter and coat with cracker crumbs.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry the croquettes in hot oil until they are a pretty brown.

  2. Serve with mayonnaise or your preferred 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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Fish + milktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,432 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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 supplies their savory flavour.
Flour
Helps the egg and milk form a batter that binds the coating to the fish.
1 egg
Binds the batter so it clings to the fish balls and sets when fried.
Cracker crumbs
Form a crisp outer crust that browns during frying.

The step that matters

Fry until pretty brown. Frying in hot oil browns the crumb coating through the Maillard reaction and crisps its surface. Oil that is too cool lets the croquettes soak up grease and turn pale and soggy before the coating sets.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Nutmegfits about as well
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Turmericfits about as well
  4. Cardamomfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, pepper, flour, egg, milk. 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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