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Fish Cake

A fish cake made from cold fish, onion, herbs, breadcrumbs, mashed potatoes, and egg, served with a savory gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Fish Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the gravy

  1. Remove the meat from the bones of the fish.

  2. Place the bones, head, and fins in a saucepan with the water.

  3. Add salt, pepper, onion, and herbs; simmer for 2 hours to make gravy.

Make and fry the cakes

  1. Finely chop the fish and mix it with breadcrumbs, cold potatoes, parsley, and seasoning.

  2. Form the mixture into a cake using the egg.

  3. Brush the cake with the beaten egg and coat with breadcrumbs.

  4. Fry in hot oil until light brown.

Finish and serve

  1. Strain the gravy and pour it over the cake; simmer gently for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally.

  2. Serve hot, 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 + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + dilltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together669 recipes

    Shared aroma: p-mentha-1,3,8-triene (camphor, herbal).

  3. Thyme + dilltop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together164 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (apple, fatty).

  4. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  5. Dill + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together423 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cold potatoes
Add body and moisture, helping the mixture hold together and stay soft inside.
Breadcrumbs
Bind the mixture and absorb moisture, and form a golden crust when fried.
Egg
Binds the mixture together and, brushed on top, helps the coating adhere and brown.
Fish
Provides the main flavour and the bulk of the cake's texture.
Onion
Adds savoury depth and aroma to the gravy as it simmers.

The step that matters

Frying until light brown. Frying in hot oil browns the breadcrumb coating and sets the outside, while a cooler pan would soak up oil and leave the crust pale and greasy.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, parsley, thyme, dill, pepper, potato, egg. 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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