Skip to main content
Main

Fish Croquettes

Fish croquettes are fried fish cakes made with minced whitefish, milk or stock, flour, butter, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Fish Croquettes

Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Fish Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Cook and mince the whitefish.

  2. Season with salt and pepper.

  3. In a saucepan, combine milk or stock and flour, then heat until thickened.

  4. Stir in melted butter and mix with the fish.

Shape and fry

  1. Add cream until the mixture is too soft to handle, then chill until firm.

  2. Mold into desired shapes and fry in boiling lard.

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

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Whitefish + creamtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Whitefish
Forms the main body and flavor of the croquettes.
Flour
Thickens the milk or stock into a binding base that holds the fish together.
Milk or stock
Supplies moisture and turns into a thickened sauce with the flour.
Butter
Adds richness and a smoother, softer texture to the mixture.
Cream
Adds moisture and softness so the mixture can be shaped after chilling.

The step that matters

Chill until firm before shaping. The mixture is soft when warm and loosens as it is handled. Chilling lets the starch and fat set so the croquettes hold their shape and do not break apart in the hot lard.

“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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes