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Fish Cakes

Fish cakes made from flaked fish, bread crumbs, mashed potatoes, and herbs, fried in fat and served with lemon and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Fish Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Combine water, onion, herbs, salt, and pepper in a stewpan.

  2. Simmer gently for 2 hours.

Shape the cakes

  1. Pick the cold fish from the bones and break into small flakes.

  2. Mix flaked fish with bread crumbs, mashed potatoes, and minced parsley.

  3. Shape mixture into cakes, moistening with egg white.

  4. Dip cakes in egg yolk and roll in bread crumbs.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry cakes in boiling fat until browned.

  2. Serve with or without sauce, garnished with lemon slices and 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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  5. Potato + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,855 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cold fish
Forms the main body and flavor of the cakes.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and bind the mixture, and form a crisp outer coating.
Cold potatoes
Add moisture and softness, helping the cakes hold together.
Egg white
Helps the mixture bind when moistened and shaped into cakes.
Egg yolk
Adds richness and helps the coating stick and brown.

The step that matters

Fry cakes in boiling fat until browned. The fat must be hot enough to brown the coating quickly. If the oil is too cool, the cakes absorb grease and can fall apart or turn soggy before a crust forms.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, fish, bread, potato, parsley, egg, lemon):

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, fish, bread, potato, parsley, egg, lemon. 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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