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Fish Cakes

A fried dish of boiled fish and potatoes mixed with egg, butter, and seasoning, coated in egg and breadcrumbs.

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

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. Break the fish into pieces and remove the bones.

  2. Boil the potatoes and rub them through a sieve.

  3. Melt the butter in a saucepan, then add the potatoes, fish, egg, and seasoning; mix well.

  4. Shape the mixture into small flat cakes about 4 inches round and 1 inch high.

Coat and fry

  1. Coat the cakes in egg and bread crumbs, then reshape them with a knife.

  2. Fry in hot oil until golden brown, then drain on kitchen paper.

Serve

  1. Serve on a dish with fried parsley in the center.

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

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold boiled fish
Provides the main flesh and flavour of the cakes.
Boiled potatoes
Add body and softness, binding the fish into a cohesive mixture.
Egg
Binds the mixture together and helps the coating hold during frying.
Butter
Adds richness and flavour to the mixture.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden crust when fried.

The step that matters

Coat and reshape the cakes before frying. Egg and bread crumbs need to cling evenly to the cakes, and reshaping them with a knife helps seal the surface so they hold together in hot oil and brown evenly rather than breaking apart.

Swap the potato

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

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

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