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Fish Cakes

Fish cakes made with salmon, mashed potatoes, milk, egg, breadcrumbs, and seasonings, fried and garnished with parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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

Make the mixture

  1. Heat the cold mashed potatoes in a pan with a little milk until hot and smooth.

  2. Chop the salmon coarsely and add it to the potatoes.

  3. Season with salt and pepper.

  4. Mix well over the heat, adding more milk if the mixture is too dry.

  5. Let the mixture cool on a plate.

Shape and fry

  1. Shape it into small round cakes.

  2. Coat each cake with beaten egg and breadcrumbs.

  3. Fry the cakes in hot fat until lightly browned.

  4. Drain the cakes well.

Serve

  1. Serve garnished with crisply-fried parsley.

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

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

  4. Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  5. Salmon + eggtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,485 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Salmon
Provides the main body and flavour of the cakes.
Mashed potatoes
Binds the mixture and gives it a soft, moist texture.
Egg
Coats the cakes to help the breadcrumbs stick and brown.
Breadcrumbs
Form a crisp, golden crust when fried.

The step that matters

Mix over the heat and adjust the milk. Potato starch thickens as it heats and dries out, so the mixture can become stiff and crumbly. Adding a little milk keeps it moist enough to bind and shape. Letting it cool before shaping makes the cakes firm enough to hold their form in the pan.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Dillfits better
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Nutmegfits about as well
  4. Thymefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, potato, milk, egg, 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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