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63 Fish Cutlets

Fish cutlets made with herbs, shallot, anchovy essence, butter, and bread crumbs, served with sautéed onions, green vegetables, nasturtiums, and pickle.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread 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 ↓

63 Fish Cutlets

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the herb seasoning

  1. Chop the herbs and shallot. Season with pepper and salt.

  2. Melt the butter in a stewpan. Add the essence of anchovies, ensuring it does not brown.

  3. Mix the herb-seasoning well. Let it cool slightly.

Prepare and cook the cutlets

  1. Cut the fish into cutlets. Spread the herb-seasoning thickly on each piece.

  2. Dredge the fish with bread crumbs.

  3. Cook the cutlets in a buttered pan in the oven at 400°F (200°C) or over a fire.

Serve

  1. Stew the onions and green vegetables in a little broth. Add nasturtiums and a bit of pickle.

  2. Serve the vegetables in the center of a dish. Arrange the cutlets around them.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Shallot + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,431 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  5. Shallot + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,898 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Melted and used to cook the seasoning gently and enrich the flavour, with a buttered pan for the cutlets.
Bread crumbs
Coat the fish, adding a crisp, browned surface during cooking.
Essence of anchovies
Adds a savoury, salty depth to the herb seasoning.
Herbs
Provide the main aroma and fresh flavour of the herb seasoning spread on the fish.
White fish
Forms the body of the cutlets, cooking to a tender, flaky texture.

The step that matters

Add the essence of anchovies without browning. Butter that browns turns bitter and loses its delicate flavour, and overheated anchovy can taste harsh. Keeping the heat gentle lets the butter and anchovy blend smoothly into the herb seasoning.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (shallot, pepper, butter, fish, bread):

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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