Skip to main content
Main

Fish Croquettes

Fish croquettes are fried balls of fish paste coated in egg and breadcrumbs, served with a fish gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Fish Croquettes

Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Fish Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the croquette mixture

  1. In a saucepan, mix flour, butter, and cream over medium heat until combined.

  2. Remove from heat and stir in egg yolk and seasoning.

  3. Add the fish paste and let the mixture cool.

  4. Form the mixture into balls.

Coat and fry

  1. Coat the balls in egg and bread crumbs.

  2. Fry the croquettes in hot fat until golden brown.

Make the gravy

  1. Boil the fish bones, fins, and tails with an onion and an anchovy.

  2. Season the gravy to taste.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: hexanol (green, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Thickens the butter and cream into a binding base for the croquette mixture.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the base and helps it hold together.
Cream
Adds moisture and softness to the base so it can bind the fish.
Egg yolk
Helps bind the mixture and adds richness as it sets.
Fish
Forms the main body of the croquettes, giving them their flavor and texture.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden browned outer crust when fried.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool before forming balls. A warm, soft mixture is too loose to hold its shape. Cooling lets the starch and fat firm up so the balls keep their form through coating and frying.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, cream, egg, fish, 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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesFried FishFried Fish120 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesScalloped CodScalloped Cod69 recipes