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Fish Cakes

Fish cakes made with salmon, mashed potatoes, milk, egg, breadcrumbs, and parsley, fried until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mixture

  1. Heat the cold mashed potatoes in a saucepan with a little milk until hot and smooth.

  2. Chop the salmon coarsely.

  3. Add the chopped salmon to the potatoes.

  4. Season the mixture with salt and pepper.

  5. Stir over the heat until well mixed.

  6. Add more milk if the mixture is too dry.

  7. Let the mixture cool on a plate.

Shape and fry

  1. Shape the cooled mixture into small round cakes.

  2. Coat each cake with beaten egg and breadcrumbs.

  3. Fry the cakes in hot fat until lightly browned.

  4. Drain the fried cakes well.

  5. Serve garnished with crispy‑fried parsley.

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

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

  3. Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

  4. Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  5. Salmon + eggtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,485 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

Mashed potatoes
Bind the mixture and give the cakes a soft, moist interior.
Salmon
Provides the main flavour and flaky texture of the filling.
Egg
Beaten egg helps the breadcrumb coating stick and brown during frying.
Breadcrumbs
Form a crisp, golden coating that browns when fried.
Milk
Adds moisture and keeps the potato mixture smooth and pliable.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool before shaping. A warm, loose mixture is soft and sticky, so the cakes can fall apart. Cooling firms the starch in the potatoes, which helps the cakes hold their shape in the pan.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Dillfits better
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Nutmegfits about as well
  4. Thymefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, potato, milk, egg, pepper. 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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