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Fish Cutlets

Fish cutlets made with cooked fish, milk, butter, egg yolks, flour, parsley, paprika, salt, and pepper.

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

Why it works: Parsley and pepper 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 ↓

Fish Cutlets

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Scald the milk in a saucepan.

  2. In a separate bowl, rub the butter and flour together until smooth.

  3. Add the butter-flour mixture to the scalded milk and stir until it thickens.

  4. Beat the egg yolks lightly and add them to the mixture, then remove from heat.

Shape and fry

  1. Gently mix in the chopped fish, parsley, salt, and pepper.

  2. Cool the mixture, then form it into cutlets.

  3. Cover the cutlets with beaten eggs and breadcrumbs.

  4. Fry the cutlets in hot oil until golden 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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Fish + meattop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together479 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

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

  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

Cooked fish meat
Provides the main filling and protein that forms the body of the cutlet.
Milk or cream
Supplies moisture and richness, forming a sauce that binds the fish.
Butter
Adds fat and flavour, and enriches the thickened base.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a stiff base that holds the cutlet together.
Egg yolks
Enrich and bind the mixture, helping it set when cooled and shaped.

The step that matters

Cool the mixture before forming the cutlets. A warm, soft base is too loose to shape and may slump or split. Cooling lets the flour-thickened mixture firm up so the cutlets hold their form in the hot oil.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, meat, milk, butter, egg, flour, pepper):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, meat, milk, butter, egg, flour, pepper. 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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