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Fish Cutlets

Fish cutlets made from cold cooked fish coated in crumbs and fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Fish Cutlets

Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Fish Cutlets

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the binder

  1. Season the fish with salt and pepper.

  2. In a saucepan, melt the butter, add the flour, and stir to make a thick cream sauce.

  3. Gradually add the milk, stirring until smooth, then let it cool.

Form and fry

  1. Combine the cooled sauce with the fish and form into cutlet shapes.

  2. Coat each cutlet in cracker crumbs, then dip in the beaten egg, and coat again in crumbs.

  3. Heat oil in a pan and fry the cutlets until golden brown.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Fish + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Fish + milktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,432 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Cold cooked fish
Forms the main body and flavour of the cutlets.
Butter
Enriches the sauce and adds richness to the cutlets.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a cream sauce that binds the fish.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the cream sauce, adding moisture.
Egg
Helps the cracker crumb coating adhere and set during frying.

The step that matters

Cooling the cream sauce before forming. A warm or loose sauce makes the mixture too soft to shape. Once cooled and thickened, the starch firms up, so the cutlets hold their form and do not fall apart in the pan.

“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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