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Fish Roulettes

Fish Roulettes are fried fish cutlets made with boiled fish, egg yolks, butter, flour, milk, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,259 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Fish Roulettes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Boil the fish until cooked through.

Make the sauce base

  1. In a bowl, mix the yolks of the hard-boiled eggs with butter and flour.

  2. Stir this mixture into the boiling milk.

  3. Add pepper, coarse sea salt, mustard, grated onion, and chopped parsley.

Form and fry

  1. Mix in the minced fish and form into cutlets.

  2. Dip the cutlets in egg and coat with bread crumbs.

  3. Fry in hot fat until golden brown and serve with cream sauce.

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. Mustard + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  5. Fish + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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 of the cutlets and gives them their savoury flavour.
Hard-boiled egg yolks
Enrich the mixture and help bind it into a firm, smooth base.
Butter
Adds richness and a rounded flavour to the sauce base.
Flour
Thickens the milk mixture so it holds the fish together.
Milk
Forms the creamy liquid that thickens into the base for the cutlets.
Egg
Acts as a binder so the bread crumbs stick to the cutlets.

The step that matters

Coat with bread crumbs and fry in hot fat. The egg and crumb coating must be even and the fat hot enough to brown the outside quickly, otherwise the crumbs can absorb grease or fall off and the cutlets become soggy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, egg, butter, flour, milk, pepper, mustard):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, egg, butter, flour, milk, pepper, mustard. 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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