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Fish Cakes

Fish Cakes are fried patties made from cooked fish, mashed potatoes, bread crumbs, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley 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

six or eight cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Remove the skin and bones from the hot fish, then break it into pieces.

Make the mixture

  1. Mix the fish with the mashed potatoes, bread crumbs, lemon rind, parsley, salt, and pepper.

  2. Beat the egg and add it to the mixture last.

  3. Divide the mixture and form it into six or eight flat cakes on a floured surface.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat 1 oz of dripping in a frying pan until hot and smoking.

  2. Fry a few cakes at a time until brown on one side, then turn and brown the other side.

  3. Repeat with the remaining cakes.

  4. Serve hot or cold.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Potato + peppertop 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

Cooked fish
Forms the main body and flavour of the cakes.
Mashed potatoes
Adds bulk and moisture, keeping the cakes soft inside.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and help the cakes hold their shape while frying.
Egg
Binds the mixture together so the cakes hold their shape.
Dripping
Fat for frying, helping the outside brown and crisp.

The step that matters

Heat the dripping until hot and smoking before frying. Hot fat sears the outside of each cake quickly, forming a browned crust that helps it hold together. Cakes added to cool fat soak up grease and break apart more easily.

Swap the potato

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

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

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