Skip to main content
Main

Smoked Haddock Croquets

Smoked haddock croquettes are breaded fish cakes served with mashed potatoes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Smoked Haddock Croquets

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the fish

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Place the smoked haddock in the oven for a few minutes.

  3. Remove all bones and skin from the haddock.

  4. Pound the flesh in a mortar.

Shape the croquettes

  1. Add chopped onion, mixed herbs, lemon rind, pepper, and salt to the pounded fish.

  2. Mix in the fine bread crumbs and bind with beaten eggs.

  3. Form the mixture into croquets.

  4. Coat the croquets in egg.

  5. Coat the croquets in bread crumbs.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry in butter until golden brown.

  2. Serve garnished with parsley and lemon slices on a stand of mashed potatoes.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

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

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

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

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

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

  5. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Smoked haddock
Provides the main flavour and the flaked body of the croquettes.
Fine bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and give the mixture body so it holds its shape.
Eggs
Bind the mixture together and form a coating that helps the crumbs stick.
Butter
Conducts heat for frying and promotes browning and a rich flavour on the outside.

The step that matters

Binding the mixture before shaping. Too little egg or crumb leaves the mixture loose and it can fall apart in the pan. Moisture from the fish needs enough crumb to absorb it, so the croquettes hold their shape while frying.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (haddock, veal, lemon, pepper, bread, egg, butter):

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against haddock, veal, lemon, pepper, bread, 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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesPotato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipes