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Fish Croquettes

A fried patty made from cold fish, butter, milk, flour, egg, seasonings, and breadcrumbs.

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

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 ↓

Fish Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. Remove bones from the cold fish and break it into pieces.

  2. Heat the butter in a pan.

  3. Stir in the sweet milk and thicken with flour.

  4. Once cooked, add the beaten egg, minced fish, pepper, salt, parsley, and lemon juice.

  5. Spread the mixture out to cool.

Shape and fry

  1. Form the mixture into croquettes.

  2. Dip the croquettes in grated bread crumbs.

  3. Fry the croquettes in hot 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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  5. Fish + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cold fish
Forms the main body and flavour of the croquettes.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that keeps the mixture tender.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a binding base that holds the mixture together.
Beaten egg
Binds the mixture so the croquettes keep their shape.
Grated bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden coating when fried.

The step that matters

Spread the mixture out to cool. A thick, warm mixture is too soft to shape and will slump or split when formed. Cooling firms the starch and fat so the croquettes hold their shape and fry cleanly.

Swap the parsley

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

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

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