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Fish Cake

A savory fish cake made with minced fish, bread crumbs, potatoes, herbs, and gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Fish Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Make the gravy

  1. Put fish bones, head, and fins in a stew pan with water, salt, pepper, onion, and herbs.

  2. Stew to make gravy.

Form and fry the cakes

  1. Mince the cold fish meat.

  2. Mix the minced fish with bread crumbs, cold potatoes, parsley, and seasoning.

  3. Form the mixture into a cake using egg white, butter, or milk.

  4. Egg the top. Cover with bread crumbs.

  5. Fry until golden brown.

Finish and serve

  1. Pour gravy over the cake.

  2. Stew gently for 15 minutes, stirring carefully twice or thrice.

  3. Serve hot. Garnish with lemon slices or 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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

Meat from cold fish
Forms the main body of the cake, giving it its flavour and bulk.
Cold potatoes
Bind the minced fish and add moisture and body to the cake.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and help hold the cake together, while the coating browns when fried.
Egg white or butter or milk
Acts as a binder that helps the cake hold its shape.

The step that matters

Fry until golden brown. The cake is coated in egg and crumbs, so it can burn on the outside before it is heated through. Moderate heat lets the coating brown evenly while the inside warms and the mixture firms up.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, fish, pepper, bread, potato, parsley, 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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