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Fish Cakes

Fish cakes made with cold fish, brown sauce, anchovy sauce, gherkins, egg, and bread crumbs, fried until golden.

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 stewpan from the heat and add the fish in small flakes, ensuring all skin and bone are removed.

  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 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 main body of the cakes, giving them flakes and bulk.
Thick brown sauce
Binds the fish together and adds moisture and savoury flavour.
Egg
Coats the cakes so the bread crumbs adhere and help them brown.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp golden outer coating when fried.

The step that matters

Cool the mixture before shaping. A warm, soft mixture is too loose to hold its shape and may fall apart in the pan. Cooling lets the sauce and fish firm up so the cakes keep their form when coated and fried.

“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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