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Fish Sausages

A dish of minced fish mixed with spices and egg, formed into sausages or balls, then fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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 Sausages

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. Remove all bones from the fish and mince it finely.

  2. Season the minced fish with cayenne, black pepper, and coarse sea salt.

  3. Mix in enough raw beaten egg to bind the mixture together.

  4. Optionally, mix in bread crumbs or cold mashed potatoes, and coat with bread crumbs before frying.

  5. Form the mixture into sausages or small balls.

Cook and serve

  1. Fry the sausages or balls in a pan until browned.

  2. Serve with plain melted butter.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

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

  4. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. Pepper + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Raw beaten egg
Binds the minced fish together so the sausages hold their shape while frying.
Bread crumbs or cold mashed potatoes
Optional filler that adds body and softens the texture of the mixture.
Plain melted butter
Adds richness and fat as a serving sauce alongside the fried fish.

The step that matters

Mixing in the egg. Too little egg leaves the mixture crumbly, so the sausages break apart in the pan; the egg's proteins set on heating and hold the fish together.

“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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