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Fish Croquettes

A fried fish patty made with cold fish, butter, milk, flour, egg, seasonings, and breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Fish Croquettes

Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Fish Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Debone and break the cold fish into pieces.

  2. In a pan, heat the butter over medium heat.

  3. Stir in the sweet milk and thicken with flour until cooked.

  4. Remove from heat and add the beaten egg, minced fish, pepper, salt, parsley, and lemon juice.

  5. Spread the mixture out to cool, then form into croquettes.

Coat and fry

  1. Dip each croquette into grated bread crumbs.

  2. Fry the croquettes in hot lard 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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cooked fish
Forms the main body of the croquettes and gives them their flavour.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that keeps the filling tender.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a binding paste that holds the filling together.
Egg
Binds the filling so the croquettes keep their shape when fried.
Bread crumbs
Forms a crisp, golden coating during frying.

The step that matters

Cooling the filling before shaping. A warm, soft filling is too loose to hold its shape and can break apart in the hot lard. Spreading it out to cool lets it firm up so each croquette keeps its form while frying.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, butter, milk, flour, egg, pepper, lemon):

  1. Parsleythe original
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Tarragonfits less well
  4. Cardamomfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, butter, milk, flour, egg, pepper, lemon. 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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