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Fish Cake

A savory fish cake made with cold fish, mashed potatoes, bread crumbs, and herbs, fried and served with gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Fish Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Remove bones from the cold fish.

  2. In a pot, combine fish bones, fins, heads, water, and sliced onion; stew for 1 hour.

  3. Chop the fish finely and mix with mashed potatoes and bread crumbs.

  4. Add minced parsley, salt, and pepper; mix well and form into a cake using 1 egg.

Coat and fry

  1. Coat the cake with beaten egg and bread crumbs.

  2. Fry in hot oil until light brown.

Serve

  1. Strain the gravy and pour it over the fish cake before serving.

  2. Garnish with parsley and lemon slices.

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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

Cold fish
Forms the main body of the cake and gives it its flavour.
Mashed potatoes
Adds moisture and softness, helping the cake hold together without drying out.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and add structure, and form a crisp, browned outer crust when fried.
Egg
Binds the mixture so the cake holds its shape and sets when cooked.
Onion
Adds aromatic flavour to the stock made from the fish bones and heads.

The step that matters

Frying in hot oil until light brown. The cake is already cooked through, so frying is for browning. Oil that is too cool lets the cake soak up grease and fall apart, while oil that is too hot browns the crumb coating before the centre warms. Moderate, steady heat gives an even golden crust.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, potato, bread, parsley, pepper, egg, lemon):

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, potato, bread, parsley, pepper, egg, lemon. 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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