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Fish Bissolettes

Fish bissolette is a fried ball of cooked whiting and mashed potato coated in pastry and breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Whiting and sauce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 236 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Fish Bissolettes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Flake the cooked whiting and mix with mashed potato in a ratio of two-thirds fish to one-third potato.

  2. Add hot thick white sauce to create a stiff paste and season with salt, curry powder, pepper, and nutmeg.

  3. Spread the mixture on a plate and let it cool slightly.

Shape and coat

  1. Form small balls using a dessert spoon and flour your hands.

  2. Wrap each ball in a round of thin pastry, moistening the edges to seal.

  3. Dip the wrapped balls in beaten egg, then coat with dry breadcrumbs.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry in plenty of boiling fat until golden brown, then drain on paper.

  2. Serve garnished with fried parsley.

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. Whiting + saucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together236 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Nutmeg + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

  4. Potato + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,855 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Cooked whiting
Forms the main body of the filling and gives it its flavour.
Mashed potato
Adds bulk and softness, helping the fish mixture hold together.
Thick white sauce
Binds the fish and potato into a stiff paste and adds moisture.
Light pastry
Encloses the filling and crisps to a golden, flaky shell when fried.
Beaten egg
Helps the breadcrumbs stick and forms a coating that browns when fried.
Dry breadcrumbs
Form a crisp, browned outer crust during frying.

The step that matters

Fry in plenty of boiling fat until golden brown. Enough hot fat keeps the coating from soaking up oil, so it browns quickly and seals in the moist filling without becoming greasy.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (whiting, sauce, pepper, nutmeg, flour, egg, parsley):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Horseradishfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against whiting, sauce, pepper, nutmeg, flour, egg, parsley. 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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