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Fish Cutlets

Fish cutlets are fried pieces of seasoned fish coated in crumbs and served with a cream sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Fish Cutlets

Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Fish Cutlets

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Season the cold cooked fish with salt and pepper.

  2. In a saucepan, make a thick cream sauce by combining milk, butter, and flour; let it cool.

  3. Mix the cooled sauce with the seasoned fish and form into cutlet shapes.

Coat and fry

  1. Coat each cutlet in cracker crumbs, then dip in beaten egg, and coat again in crumbs.

  2. Fry the cutlets in hot fat until they are brown.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

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

  2. Fish + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 recipes

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Fish + milktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,432 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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

Cold cooked fish
Forms the main body of the cutlets, providing the flavor and bulk.
Flour
Thickens the milk and butter into a sauce that binds the fish together.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the cream sauce, softening its texture.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the cream sauce that holds the cutlet mixture together.
Egg
Helps the cracker crumb coating adhere and forms a crisp, binding layer.
Cracker crumbs
Form a crisp, browning outer coating when fried.

The step that matters

Cool the cream sauce before mixing. A warm sauce would loosen the fish and make the cutlets soft and hard to shape. Cooling lets the thickened starch firm up so the mixture holds its form when coated and fried.

“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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