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Fish Cake

A fish cake made with minced fish meat, bread crumbs, herbs, and spices, fried and simmered in fish gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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 Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Make the gravy

  1. Remove the meat from the fish bones, head, and fins.

  2. Combine the bones, head, fins, water, onion, herbs, pepper, and salt in a pot.

  3. Simmer the mixture to make gravy.

Form and coat the cakes

  1. Mince the fish meat.

  2. Mix the minced fish meat with bread crumbs, minced onion, parsley, pepper, salt, and mace.

  3. Combine the mixture with egg white and melted butter to form a cake.

  4. Coat the cake with bread crumbs.

Fry and simmer

  1. Fry the coated cake until pale brown, covering it with a plate while frying.

  2. Place the fried cake in a stewpan with the fish gravy.

  3. Simmer gently for 30 minutes, turning carefully to avoid breaking.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  5. Meat + fishtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together479 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

Fish meat
Forms the body of the cake and gives it its savoury flavour.
Egg white
Binds the minced fish and crumbs so the cakes hold their shape.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and add bulk, giving the cake a softer texture.
Melted butter
Adds richness and moisture, and helps the coating brown when fried.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness and depth to the gravy and the cake.

The step that matters

Turning the cake in the gravy. The cake is delicate after frying and can break apart. Turning it gently keeps its shape, while the gentle simmer lets it cook through without the proteins toughening or the coating falling away.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, fish, onion, pepper, bread, parsley, egg. 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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