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Preserve

Croquettes of Fish

Fish croquettes made from boiled fish, butter, flour, milk, anchovy sauce, spices, breaded and fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 ↓

Croquettes of Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Make the fish mixture

  1. Remove the skin and bones from the cold fish and break it into small pieces.

  2. In a saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat until light brown.

  3. Stir in the flour and cook for a minute, then gradually add the hot milk while stirring until thickened.

  4. Mix in the anchovy sauce, nutmeg, cayenne, and season with salt and pepper.

  5. Add the fish to the sauce and gently heat until nearly boiling, then transfer to a plate and let cool until firm.

Shape and fry

  1. Shape the cooled mixture into cork-like forms, then dip each in beaten egg and roll in bread crumbs.

  2. Fry the croquettes in hot lard at 385°F (196°C) until golden brown.

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

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

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  4. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Fish + anchovytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together637 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

Cold fish
Provides the main body and flavor of the croquettes.
Butter
Enriches the sauce and adds richness and flavor to the base.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a sauce that holds the fish together.
Hot milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, giving it a smooth, creamy texture.
Egg
Binds the coating so bread crumbs adhere and form a crisp shell.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool until firm. The sauce must set fully before shaping; if it is still warm and soft, the croquettes will lose their shape and may break apart or split in the hot lard.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, butter, flour, milk, anchovy, pepper, bread):

  1. Capersfits about as well
  2. Parsleyfits about as well
  3. Nutmegthe original
  4. Thymefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, butter, flour, milk, anchovy, pepper, bread. 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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