Skip to main content
Main

Fish Fritters

A fried fish patty made with cold fish, butter, breadcrumbs, spices, and lemon peel.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Fish Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. In a basin, combine the picked pieces of cold fish, soft butter, bread crumbs, pepper, coarse sea salt, grated nutmeg, and lemon peel.

  2. Moisten the mixture with beaten eggs and mix well.

  3. Shape the mixture into neat pieces.

Coat and fry

  1. Dip each piece in beaten egg, then coat with bread crumbs and grated cheese.

  2. Fry the fritters in hot oil or butter until golden brown.

  3. Garnish with fried parsley before serving.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  4. Bread + cheesetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,130 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cold fish
Provides the main body and flavour of the fritters.
Eggs
Bind the mixture so the fritters hold their shape.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and give the fritters a firmer, tender texture.
Soft butter
Adds richness and moisture to the mixture.
Grated cheese
Adds savoury flavour and helps the coating brown when fried.

The step that matters

Frying until golden brown. Frying in hot oil or butter sets the coating quickly and browns it, so the fritters crisp outside while staying moist inside. Oil that is not hot enough lets the coating soak up fat and turn greasy.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits about as well
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, butter, bread, pepper, lemon, egg, cheese. 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 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesFried FishFried Fish120 recipesMacaroni and CheeseMacaroni and Cheese102 recipes