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Fish Cutlets

Fish cutlets made from cold cooked fish coated in crumbs and fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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

Flour
Thickens the milk and butter into a cream sauce that binds the fish.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the cream sauce, giving a softer, more tender texture.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the cream sauce that holds the fish together.
Egg
Binds the cracker crumb coating so it adheres to the cutlets during frying.
Cracker crumbs
Form a crisp, browned outer crust when the cutlets are fried.

The step that matters

Let the cream sauce cool before mixing. A hot sauce would melt the butter and make the mixture loose and sticky, so the cutlets would not hold their shape. Cooling lets the starch-thickened sauce firm up and bind the fish.

“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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