Skip to main content
Main

Fish Croquettes

Fish croquettes made with boiled or baked fish, Worcestershire sauce, spices, milk, flour, butter, egg, and fried in lard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Fish Croquettes

Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Fish Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mixture

  1. Season the fish with Worcestershire sauce, cayenne pepper, and nutmeg.

  2. In a saucepan, combine milk, flour, butter, pepper, and salt; cook for 5 minutes.

  3. Add the sauce to the fish and mix well.

  4. Once cool, shape the mixture into oblong forms.

Fry and garnish

  1. Dip each croquette into the beaten egg, then fry in deep boiling lard until golden.

  2. Garnish each croquette with a sprig of celery.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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 bulk of the croquette and supplies its main flavour.
Milk
Combines with flour and butter to make the thick sauce that binds the fish.
Flour
Thickens the milk and butter into a sauce that holds the mixture together.
Egg
Coats the shaped croquettes so they set and brown during frying.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the thickened sauce, improving flavour and texture.

The step that matters

Cooling the mixture before shaping. The fish and sauce must be cool and firm enough to hold their shape; shaping a warm mixture makes it soft and likely to break apart in the hot lard.

Swap the nutmeg

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

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

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

Fried FishFried Fish120 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesScalloped CodScalloped Cod69 recipesBroiled FishBroiled Fish68 recipes