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Dkessed Fish

Fish cakes made from minced fish, breadcrumbs, herbs, and spices, fried and simmered in a fish gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Dkessed Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the gravy

  1. Combine fish head and fins with water, onion, herbs, pepper, and salt in a pot; bring to a simmer to create gravy.

Form and coat the cakes

  1. Mince fish meat and mix with ⅓ cup bread crumbs, minced onion, parsley, pepper, salt, and mace.

  2. Form the mixture into a cake using egg white and melted butter, then coat with bread crumbs.

Fry and simmer

  1. Fry the cake in a pan until pale brown, covering it with a plate while cooking.

  2. Transfer the cake to a stewpan with the fish gravy and simmer gently for 15 minutes, turning carefully to avoid breaking it; cover while stewing.

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

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

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  5. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Fish meat (in the method)
Forms the body of the cake, providing the main protein structure.
Egg white
Binds the minced mixture so the cake holds its shape while frying.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and give the cake a firmer, lightly crisp coating.
Melted butter
Adds fat for richness and helps the cake brown when fried.

The step that matters

Transfer the cake to the gravy and simmer gently. Fried cakes are fragile and can break if handled or boiled hard; gentle simmering and careful turning keep the cake intact while it finishes cooking through.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, pepper, bread, parsley, egg, butter):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, pepper, bread, parsley, egg, butter. 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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