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Fish Cakes

Fish cakes made with mashed potatoes, boiled fish, milk, butter, egg, onion, thyme, pepper, salt, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,023 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Fish Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Mix the base

  1. In a large bowl, mix together the mashed potatoes and cold boiled fish.

  2. Add milk, butter, and the egg if using, then mix well.

  3. Stir in pepper, chopped onion, thyme, and salt if needed.

Shape and fry

  1. Sprinkle flour on the mixture and form into small, thick cakes.

  2. Fry the cakes in a skillet until they are light brown on both sides.

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. Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Potato + thymetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,586 recipes

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

  4. Onion + thymetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Mashed potatoes
Form the bulk of the cakes and hold them together as a soft, moist mass.
Fish
Provides the main flavour and the flaky texture of the cakes.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavour and helps the cakes brown in the pan.
Milk
Moistens the potato mixture so it stays soft and easy to shape.
Egg
Binds the mixture so the cakes hold their shape when fried.

The step that matters

Fry the cakes until light brown on both sides. The mixture is soft and moist, so the cakes can break apart or stick if they are turned too early. Waiting until one side is set and browned lets the surface firm up, and the browning adds flavour through the Maillard reaction.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, fish, milk, butter, egg, pepper, thyme):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, fish, milk, butter, egg, pepper, thyme. 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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