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Fish Cutlets

Fish cutlets made with finely chopped fish, suet, flour, stock, mashed potatoes, and breadcrumbs, fried in suet.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Fish Cutlets

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 Cutlets

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mixture

  1. Chop the fish finely.

  2. Melt the butter in a pan, then stir in the flour until smooth.

  3. Add the chopped fish and stock, cooking until the mixture thickens.

  4. Season with pepper and salt, then cool the mixture on a plate.

Shape and fry

  1. Once cool, mold the mixture into cutlet shapes.

  2. Dip each cutlet in beaten egg, then coat with breadcrumbs.

  3. Fry the cutlets in hot Hugon's suet until golden brown.

Serve

  1. Serve the cutlets on a bed of mashed potatoes, garnished with 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.

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. 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. Pepper + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Fish
Forms the main body of the cutlet and gives it its flavour.
Flour
Combines with the melted fat and stock to thicken the mixture so it holds its shape.
Egg
Binds the cutlet and helps the breadcrumb coating adhere.
Potatoes
Provide a soft, mild base that the cutlets are served on.

The step that matters

Cool the mixture fully before shaping. A warm mixture is soft and sticky, so cutlets made from it can slump or tear. Cooling lets the starch set so the shapes hold firm through dipping and frying.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits about as well
  3. Leekfits about as well
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, butter, flour, pepper, 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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