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Fried Fish Cakes

Fried fish cakes made from mashed potatoes, fish flakes, butter, pepper, and milk, coated in flour and fried in bacon fat.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Fried Fish Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the potatoes

  1. Cook the potatoes in boiling salted water until tender.

  2. Drain and mash the potatoes.

Shape the cakes

  1. Add the fish flakes, butter, pepper, and hot milk to the mashed potatoes.

  2. Beat the mixture thoroughly and shape it into cakes.

  3. Dip the cakes in flour.

Fry

  1. Fry the cakes in the fat rendered from the bacon.

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

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

  2. Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

  3. Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

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

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Potatoes
Provide the starchy bulk that holds the cakes together and gives a soft interior.
Fish flakes
Supply the main flavour and protein that give the cakes their substance.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, softening the mash and contributing flavour.
Hot milk
Moistens the mashed potato so it becomes smooth and easy to shape.
Flour
Forms a dry coating that helps the cakes brown and crisp when fried.

The step that matters

Beat the mixture thoroughly and shape it into cakes. Beating works the potato starch and binds the mash into a cohesive mixture, so the cakes hold their shape in the pan rather than crumbling apart during frying.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Potatothe original
  2. Capsicumfits about as well
  3. Leekfits less well
  4. Asparagusfits less well

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