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Fish Fritters

Fish fritters made with cold fish, mashed potatoes, onion, egg, and fried in lard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove skin and bones from the cold fish.

  2. Pound the fish with the onion in a mortar. Season with pepper and coarse sea salt.

  3. Mix the fish with the mashed potatoes and bind with the beaten egg.

  4. Flatten the mixture on a dish or pastry board and cut into small rounds or squares.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry in boiling lard until light brown.

  2. Serve piled in a napkin on a hot dish, garnished with parsley, and with any kind of fish sauce.

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. Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  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

Cold fish
Forms the main body and flavour of the fritters.
Mashed potatoes
Adds bulk and softness, keeping the fritters moist inside.
Egg
Binds the mixture so the fritters hold their shape while frying.
Onion
Adds savoury aroma and flavour to the fish mixture.
Lard
Fries the outside, giving browning and a crisp surface.

The step that matters

Fry in boiling lard until light brown. The lard must be hot enough to brown the outside quickly. If it is too cool, the fritters absorb more fat and turn greasy and soft before they set.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, potato, pepper, egg, parsley. 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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