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Fish Cake of Cold Fish

A cake made from minced cold fish, bread crumbs, mashed potatoes, and eggs, simmered in a fish broth and fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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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 Cake of Cold Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Using two forks, pick the meat from the fish and mince it very fine.

  2. Mix the minced fish with equal quantities of bread crumbs and cold mashed potatoes, then season with pepper and salt.

Make the gravy

  1. Combine the fish bones, heads, trimmings, parsley, pepper, salt, and water in a stewpan.

  2. Simmer slowly for 1 hour and 45 minutes.

Shape, coat and cook

  1. Form the fish mixture into a cake, binding it with the beaten egg white.

  2. Brush the cake with the egg yolk and coat it with additional bread crumbs.

  3. Fry the cake lightly until golden brown.

  4. Pour the strained gravy over the cake and let it stew over gentle heat for 20 minutes, stirring occasionally.

  5. Garnish with slices of lemon before serving.

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

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cold fish meat
Forms the main body of the cake and gives it its flavour.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and help the mixture hold together while frying.
Cold mashed potatoes
Add body and softness, keeping the minced fish moist inside the cake.
Egg white
Binds the mixture so the cake holds its shape.
Egg yolk
Enriches the outer coating so it browns richly when fried.

The step that matters

Binding and frying the cake. The mixture is soft, so it needs firm binding and a lightly oiled, moderately hot pan. Frying too hot browns the crumb coating before the centre sets, and handling too roughly can break the cake apart.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Potatothe original

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