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Fish Cake

A fish cake made from minced cold fish meat mixed with breadcrumbs, herbs, and egg white, fried and simmered in fish 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

Prepare the gravy

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

  2. Combine the bones, head, fins, water, onion, sweet herbs, pepper, and salt in a pot. Simmer the mixture to make gravy.

Make and cook the cakes

  1. Mince the fish meat and mix it with bread crumbs, minced onion, parsley, and seasoning.

  2. Form the mixture into a cake, adding egg white and melted butter.

  3. Cover the cake with bread crumbs and fry until pale brown.

  4. Strain the fish gravy over the cake and simmer gently for 15 minutes.

  5. Carefully turn the cake twice using a fish slice, keeping the lid on the pot.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 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 fish meat
Forms the main body of the cake and gives it its flavour.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and bind the mixture, and form a browned crust when fried.
Egg white
Binds the mixture together so the cake holds its shape.
Melted butter
Adds fat for moisture and richer flavour, and aids browning.

The step that matters

Carefully turn the cake twice using a fish slice, keeping the lid on the pot.. The cake is delicate and can break apart when moved. Turning gently with a slice, and keeping the lid on so steam stays in, helps it hold together while it simmers.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, meat, pepper, bread, parsley, egg, butter. 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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