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Croquettes of Fish

A fried fish patty made from minced fish, egg, flour, and milk, served with a fish bone gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Fish and anchovy work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 637 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Croquettes of Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the croquettes

  1. Remove bones from the fish and mince it with a little seasoning.

  2. In a bowl, mix the minced fish with the beaten egg, flour, and milk.

  3. Roll the mixture into balls.

  4. Brush the outside of each ball with egg and dredge in bread or cracker crumbs.

Fry and make gravy

  1. Fry the croquettes in hot oil until golden brown.

  2. For gravy, simmer the fish bones, heads, tails, onion, anchovy, and water together.

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. Fish + anchovytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together637 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  3. Bread + anchovytop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,260 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanol (green, fruity).

  4. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Egg + anchovytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,330 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Dressed fish
Forms the main body of the croquette mixture and gives it its flavour.
Egg
Binds the minced fish together and, brushed outside, helps the crumbs stick.
Flour
Adds body to the mixture so the balls hold their shape.
Milk
Adds moisture to keep the croquette mixture soft and tender.
Bread or cracker crumbs
Forms a crisp outer coating that browns when fried.

The step that matters

Fry the croquettes in hot oil until golden brown. Oil that is not hot enough lets the coated croquettes soak up grease and fall apart, while the crumb coating browns through the Maillard reaction at frying heat. Frying until golden brown means the coating is set and crisp before the soft interior is damaged.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, egg, flour, milk, bread, anchovy):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, egg, flour, milk, bread, anchovy. 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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