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Croquettes of Fish

A fried fish patty coated in breadcrumbs, served with mayonnaise or lemon sauce.

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

Croquettes of Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Carefully separate the boiled fish from the bones.

  2. Chop the fish with a little parsley, coarse sea salt, and black pepper to taste.

Shape and coat

  1. Beat the egg with the milk and a little flour.

  2. Form the fish mixture into balls, then roll them in the beaten egg and coat with cracker crumbs or bread.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry in hot oil until light brown.

  2. Serve with mayonnaise or lemon sauce.

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 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

Boiled fish
Forms the main body of the croquette and sets the flavor base.
Egg
Binds the coating so the crumbs adhere and helps the exterior set during frying.
Flour
Thickens the beaten egg so it clings to the fish balls.
Cracker crumbs or bread
Forms a crisp outer crust that browns when fried.

The step that matters

Fry in hot oil until light brown. If the oil is not hot enough, the coating absorbs oil and becomes greasy before it crisps. Too hot and the outside browns before the fish inside is heated through, so frying at a steady temperature matters.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Parsleythe original
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Marjoramfits about as well
  4. Tarragonfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, pepper, egg, milk, flour, bread, 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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