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Fish Croquettes

A fried fish patty made with boiled fish, butter, flour, eggs, cream, and lemon juice.

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

Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Fish Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Cut the fish into small pieces.

  2. Melt the butter in a pan and stir in the flour.

  3. Add the cream, lemon juice, salt, and pepper; cook until thick.

  4. Stir in the egg yolks and add the fish.

  5. Let the mixture cool, then form small croquettes.

Coat and fry

  1. Dip each croquette in egg white and coat with flour or bread crumbs.

  2. Heat the lard until boiling and fry the croquettes until golden yellow.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Boiled fish
Forms the main body of the croquettes.
Butter
Enriches the flour base and adds richness to the filling.
Flour
Thickens the butter and cream into a stiff base that holds the croquettes together.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help the filling set when cooked.
Egg whites
Form a binding coat that helps the flour or crumbs stick before frying.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, softening the filling.

The step that matters

Cook the filling until thick before adding the egg yolks. The flour must be cooked with the cream until thick so the mixture firms up. If it is too loose, the croquettes will not hold their shape. Adding hot yolks to a very hot base can scramble them, so stir them in steadily.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Coconutfits about as well
  3. Vanillafits less well
  4. Raisinfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, butter, pepper, flour, egg, cream, 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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