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Fish Croquettes

Fish croquettes made with flaked fish, white sauce, and fried in lard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Fish Croquettes

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 ↓

Fish Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the white sauce

  1. Make a white sauce by melting butter, adding flour, and gradually whisking in milk.

  2. Season the sauce with lemon juice, salt, and pepper.

Shape and coat

  1. Combine the cold flaked fish with the white sauce.

  2. Shape the mixture into croquettes.

  3. Roll each croquette in egg, then in bread crumbs, and again in egg.

Fry

  1. Fry in hot lard 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

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

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

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

  4. Fish + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold flaked fish
Forms the main body and flavour of the croquettes.
Butter
Enriches the white sauce and adds richness to the mixture.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a white sauce that binds the fish.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the white sauce, giving it a smooth, creamy body.
Egg
Coats the croquettes so the breadcrumbs stick and help them hold together when fried.
Bread crumbs
Forms a crisp, golden outer crust when fried.

The step that matters

Chilling the mixture before shaping. The white sauce must be thick and cold enough to hold its shape. If the mixture is too warm or loose, the croquettes can slump or burst open in the hot lard, so the fish and sauce need to be firm enough to handle.

“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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