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Fish Cakes

Fish cakes made with cold fish, brown sauce, anchovy sauce, gherkins, egg, and breadcrumbs, then fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sauce and anchovy are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,057 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Fish Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mixture

  1. Heat the brown sauce and stir in the anchovy sauce and finely chopped gherkins.

  2. Remove the saucepan from the heat and add the fish, flaked and free of skin and bones.

  3. Transfer the mixture to a plate and let it cool.

Shape and fry

  1. Once cool, form the mixture into small cakes.

  2. Dip each cake in beaten egg and coat with bread crumbs.

  3. Fry the cakes until golden brown and serve with fried parsley.

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. Sauce + anchovytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Fish + anchovytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together637 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Anchovy + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,260 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanol (green, fruity).

  5. Anchovy + eggtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,330 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold fish
Forms the bulk of the cakes and gives them their main flavour and body.
Brown sauce
Binds the fish into a mixture that holds its shape when cooled and formed.
Egg
Coats the cakes so the bread crumbs adhere and help them brown when fried.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden outer crust when the cakes are fried.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool fully before shaping. A warm mixture is soft and sticky, so the cakes may break or slump. Cooling lets the sauce set so the cakes hold their shape through coating and frying.

“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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