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Fish Sweets

Fish sweets are fried balls made from boiled fish, mashed potatoes, milk, butter, eggs, flour, and salt, served hot or soaked in sugar syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Syrup and sugar match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,842 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Fish Sweets

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish and potatoes

  1. Boil pieces of big fish and remove the bones.

  2. Add boiled and mashed potatoes, then mix in milk, butter, eggs, and coarse sea salt.

Make and fry the fritters

  1. Gradually add flour while beating the mixture thoroughly.

  2. Form small balls and fry them in ghee until golden brown.

Soak and serve

  1. Soak in syrup of sugar until saturated before serving.

  2. Serve hot.

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. Syrup + sugartop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  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

Big fish
Provides the main protein and bulk of the fritter mixture.
Potatoes
Add starch and softness, giving the mixture body that holds its shape.
Eggs
Bind the mixture together and help set it when fried.
Flour
Adds structure and firmness so the balls hold together while frying.
Syrup of sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture to the fritters after frying.

The step that matters

Beating in the flour. Flour must be added gradually while beating thoroughly so it blends evenly; lumps or uneven mixing lead to dense or crumbly fritters that may not hold their shape in the hot ghee.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Sweet potatofits about as well
  2. Potatothe original
  3. Arrowrootfits about as well
  4. Chivefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, milk, butter, egg, flour, syrup, sugar. 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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