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Fish Cake

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

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 gravy

  1. Remove bones from the cold fish.

  2. Combine fish bones, fins, heads, water, and sliced onion in a pot.

  3. Simmer the mixture for 1 hour.

  4. Strain the gravy from the pot.

Make and fry the fish cakes

  1. Chop the fish finely.

  2. Mix the chopped fish with equal parts mashed potatoes and bread crumbs.

  3. Add minced parsley, salt, and pepper to taste.

  4. Mix in 1 egg to form a cake.

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

  6. Fry the coated cake in hot oil until golden brown.

Serve

  1. Pour the gravy 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 and flavour of the fish cake.
Mashed potatoes
Adds moisture and softness, keeping the cakes tender inside.
Bread crumbs
Bind the mixture and form a crisp, browned coating when fried.
Egg
Binds the mixture together so the cakes hold their shape.

The step that matters

Fry the coated cake in hot oil until golden brown. Oil that is not hot enough lets the coating soak up fat and fall apart, while overheating browns the crumbs before the centre is heated through. Steady heat gives a crisp crust and a cake that stays intact.

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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