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Fish Cutlets

Breaded fish cutlets made with milk, butter, flour, egg yolk, parsley, and fried in fat.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Fish Cutlets

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 ↓

Fish Cutlets

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Thicken the milk with butter and flour rubbed together, then boil for 3 minutes over medium heat.

  2. Add the egg yolk, parsley, and cold boiled fish, and season with salt and pepper.

  3. When cold, form the mixture into cutlets.

Coat and fry

  1. Dip each cutlet in beaten egg, then in bread crumbs.

  2. Fry in very hot fat until golden brown.

  3. Drain on brown paper, then arrange on a hot platter and keep warm until serving.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

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

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

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

  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

Flour
Thickens the milk into a binding sauce that holds the fish mixture together.
Egg yolk
Binds the mixture and adds richness to hold the cutlets together.
Butter
Adds fat and flavour to the thickened milk base.
Cold boiled fish
Forms the main body of the cutlets and provides their flavour.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden coating when fried.

The step that matters

Chill the mixture before shaping. The mixture must be cold so it firms up enough to hold its shape. Shaping it warm makes the cutlets soft and likely to break apart in the hot fat.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Nutmegfits about as well
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Capersfits about as well
  4. Cinnamonfits about as well

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