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Baked Fish Cake

A baked dish of cod or halibut mixed with mashed potatoes, bread crumbs, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper 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 ↓

Baked Fish Cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Mix the fish, mashed potatoes, and drawn butter in a bowl.

  3. Season with salt and pepper.

Bake and finish

  1. Transfer the mixture to a buttered baking dish and cover.

  2. Bake for 15 minutes.

  3. Sprinkle bread crumbs on top, dot with butter, and brown quickly.

  4. Brush with beaten egg and bake for an additional minute.

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 + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  5. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Cod or halibut
Provides the flaky fish body that forms the bulk of the cake.
Mashed potatoes
Adds moisture and body, helping the mixture hold together and stay tender.
Drawn butter
Adds richness and moisture, keeping the cake from drying out in the oven.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, browned topping when baked with butter.

The step that matters

Brown the topping quickly. Bread crumbs dotted with butter brown fast at high heat, while the fish underneath is already cooked. Browning for too long dries the surface and can overcook the fish below.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits about as well
  2. Chivefits about as well
  3. Carrotfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, bread, butter, anchovy, parsley, pepper. 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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