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Fish Cakes

Fish cakes made with cooked fish, rice, breadcrumbs, parsley, egg, flour, and browned breadcrumbs, then fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,762 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Fish Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. Break up the cooked fish into flakes.

  2. Add breadcrumbs, rice, parsley, salt, and pepper.

Shape and coat

  1. Form the mixture into small balls.

  2. Dip the balls in beaten egg, then roll in browned breadcrumbs.

Fry

  1. Fry 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.

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. Rice + parsleytop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,762 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Fish + ricetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together270 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Rice + flourtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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
Provides the main flavor and most of the body of the cakes.
Cooked rice
Adds bulk and a soft texture that helps the mixture hold together.
White breadcrumbs
Absorb moisture from the mixture and help bind it into shapes.
Egg
Binds the coating so the browned breadcrumbs stick to the balls.

The step that matters

Fry in hot oil until golden brown. Hot oil crisps the breadcrumb coating quickly, so the outside browns before the inside overheats. If the oil is too cool, the coating soaks up excess oil and turns greasy.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, rice, egg, flour):

  1. Turmericfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, rice, egg, flour. 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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