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Fish Sausages

Fish sausages are made from minced fish, spices, eggs, and optional breadcrumbs or mashed potatoes, then fried and served with melted butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Fish Sausages

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Remove all bones from the fish and mince it finely.

  2. Season the minced fish with cayenne, black pepper, and coarse sea salt.

  3. Add enough raw beaten egg to bind the mixture together.

Cook and serve

  1. Shape the mixture into sausages or small balls.

  2. Fry the sausages or balls in a pan until browned.

  3. Serve with plain melted butter.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

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

  5. Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 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 sausages and gives them their flavour.
Eggs
Bind the minced fish together so the shaped sausages hold their form.

The step that matters

Add enough raw beaten egg to bind the mixture together. Too little egg leaves the mince crumbly and it falls apart when shaped or fried; too much makes it soft and wet. The egg proteins set when heated, holding the mixture together.

Swap the potato

The recipe marks potato as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, pepper, egg, bread, butter):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, pepper, egg, bread, butter. 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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