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Fish Cakes

Fish cakes made from boiled fish heads, bones, and bones, mixed with herbs, breadcrumbs, and egg, then fried and stewed.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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

Make the gravy

  1. Boil fish heads, tails, fins, and bones in enough water to cover them.

  2. Add chopped onion, mixed herbs, pepper, coarse sea salt, and a pinch of mace.

  3. Once reduced, strain the gravy and set aside.

Shape and fry

  1. Mix minced fish with bread crumbs and flavoring from the gravy.

  2. Moisten with melted butter and bind with egg white.

  3. Shape into cakes, cover with bread crumbs, and fry in butter until light brown.

Stew and serve

  1. In a stewpan, combine the strained gravy and fish cakes, cover, and stew gently for 15 minutes.

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. 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. 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

Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and give the fish mixture body so the cakes hold together.
Egg white
Binds the fish mixture and helps the cakes set when cooked.
Melted butter
Adds moisture and richness to the fish mixture, keeping the cakes from drying out.
Fish bones and heads
Release flavour and gelatine into the water, forming the savoury gravy.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, onion, pepper, bread, butter, 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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