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Toasted Corn Flake Fish Cutlets

Fish cutlets coated in toasted corn flakes, made with salmon, milk, and spices, then fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley 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 ↓

Toasted Corn Flake Fish Cutlets

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan over medium heat until bubbling but not browned.

  2. Add the flour gradually, then stir in the milk and cook until smooth.

  3. Remove from heat and mix in the salmon, lemon juice, salt, and paprika.

  4. Chill the mixture until cold.

Shape and fry

  1. Fold in the toasted corn flakes just before shaping.

  2. Shape the mixture into cutlets.

  3. Dip the cutlets in beaten egg and coat them with crushed corn flakes.

  4. Fry the cutlets in hot oil until golden brown, then drain them on paper towels.

Serve

  1. Serve garnished with lemon and 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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  4. Corn + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together943 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  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

Butter
Enriches the flavor and forms the fat base for the thickened white sauce.
Flour
Thickens the butter and milk into a sauce that binds the cutlet mixture.
Milk
Forms the liquid that, with the flour, makes a smooth binding sauce.
Salmon
Provides the main protein and flavor, held together by the sauce.
Eggs
Egg dip helps the corn flake coating adhere and brown during frying.
Corn flakes
Crisp coating that browns in the hot oil for a crunchy outer layer.

The step that matters

Chill the mixture until cold. A warm, soft mixture is too loose to shape and will slump or break apart in the pan. Chilling firms the starch-thickened sauce so the cutlets hold their form during coating and frying.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, milk, salmon, lemon, corn, egg):

  1. Nutmegfits about as well
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Capersfits about as well
  4. Dillfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, milk, salmon, lemon, corn, 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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