Name: Fresh Fish Croquettes
Ingredients: 1 pound boiled or fried fish, skin and bones removed, or 1 can (15 oz) salmon, drained; ½ teaspoon coarse sea salt; dash of cayenne pepper; 1 teaspoon lemon juice; ½ tablespoon Cottolene or other cooking fat; 1 heaped tablespoon all-purpose flour; ½ cup cream or milk, plus more if needed; 1 egg yolk, for moistening; bread crumbs, for coating

Why it works: Pepper and lemon 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 ↓

Fresh Fish Croquettes

Ingredients

1 pound boiled or fried fish, skin and bones removed, or 1 can (15 oz) salmon, drained
½ teaspoon coarse sea salt
dash of cayenne pepper
1 teaspoon lemon juice
½ tablespoon Cottolene or other cooking fat
1 heaped tablespoon all-purpose flour
½ cup cream or milk, plus more if needed
1 egg yolk, for moistening
bread crumbs, for coating

Directions

Make the base

Mince the fish finely and mix with salt, cayenne, and lemon juice.
In a pan, heat the Cottolene until bubbling, then add the flour and stir until cooked but not browned.
Gradually add the cream or milk, stirring until smooth. If too thick, add more milk.

Shape and fry

Shape the mixture into pear shapes using a wine glass as a mold.
Moisten each croquette with egg yolk, then roll in bread crumbs.
Fry the croquettes 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.

Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Fish + breadtop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,668 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).
Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together22,662 recipes

Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).
Fish + lemontop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,889 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together106,462 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and egg 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

Fish: Forms the main body and flavour of the croquettes.
All-purpose flour: Thickens the fat and cream into a binding base that holds the mixture together.
Cream or milk: Adds moisture and smoothness to the flour base, making it easy to shape.
Egg yolk: Moistens the surface so the bread crumbs adhere and help the coating brown.
Bread crumbs: Form a crisp outer coating that browns when fried.

The step that matters

Cooking the flour in fat. The flour must be cooked until it smells toasty but stays pale, which removes its raw taste and lets it thicken the cream smoothly. If it browns, it tastes bitter and loses thickening power, and if it is undercooked the croquettes taste floury.

“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.

Brown Bread461 recipes

Lemon Sauce236 recipes

Fried Fish120 recipes

White Bread80 recipes

Like knowing why a recipe works?

The free Flavor Lab newsletter: one surprising pairing a week and the molecular reason it works, in 60 seconds. No spam, unsubscribe anytime.

Prefer an account? Create a free account to save pairings and unlock the full chemistry.

Fresh Fish Croquettes