Skip to main content
Main

Fish Cutlets

Fish cutlets made from minced red snapper mixed with white sauce, coated in cracker crumbs, and fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Fish Cutlets

Why it works: Snapper and sauce share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Fish Cutlets

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Cook the fish in salted water until tender.

  2. Drain the fish and remove all bones.

  3. Mince the fish finely.

  4. Mix the minced fish with the white sauce and season to taste.

Shape and coat

  1. Mould the mixture into cutlets.

  2. Dip each cutlet in the beaten eggs.

  3. Coat each cutlet with cracker crumbs.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry the cutlets in hot fat until golden brown.

  2. Serve with tomato 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.

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. Snapper + saucetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  3. Sauce + tomatotop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,469 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Snapper + tomatotop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together89 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Sauce + oniontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Sauce and onion barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,474 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

Red snapper
Forms the main body of the cutlets and provides their flavour.
White sauce
Binds the minced fish together and keeps the cutlets moist.
Eggs
Bind the coating so the crumbs adhere and form a crisp crust.
Cracker crumbs
Form a crisp, golden outer layer when fried.

The step that matters

Frying the cutlets in hot fat. If the fat is not hot enough, the cutlets absorb excess oil and the coating turns greasy and falls apart. Hot fat quickly sets the crumb crust and browns it before the soft interior dries out.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (snapper, sauce, egg, tomato):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Welsh onionfits better
  3. Cucumberfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against snapper, sauce, egg, tomato. 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesCream of Tomato SoupCream of Tomato Soup107 recipesTomato BisqueTomato Bisque61 recipesCream Tomato SoupCream Tomato Soup28 recipes