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Fish Cutlet

A fried fish patty made from boiled fish, milk, butter, flour, egg yolks, and seasonings, served with a butter‑flour‑milk sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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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 Cutlet

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Boil the fish in salted water for 10 minutes per pound.

  2. Remove the fish, let it cool, and then flake it finely.

Make the mixture

  1. In a saucepan, bring the milk to a boil.

  2. In a bowl, mix the butter and flour together.

  3. Add the butter-flour mixture to the boiling milk.

  4. Stir in the chopped parsley and the egg yolks.

  5. Add the flaked fish and mix well.

  6. Season the mixture with salt, pepper, and optional ingredients.

Shape and fry

  1. Once cooled, form the mixture into cutlets.

  2. Roll each cutlet in flour.

  3. Dip the cutlet in beaten egg.

  4. Coat the cutlet with bread crumbs.

  5. Fry the cutlets in hot oil until golden brown.

Make the sauce

  1. For the sauce, melt butter in a pan. Stir in flour.

  2. Add milk to the sauce.

  3. Season the sauce with salt and pepper.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

  3. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  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

Fish
Forms the main body of the cutlet and gives it its flavor.
Milk or cream
Binds the mixture with moisture, keeping the cutlets tender inside.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that softens the texture of the mixture.
Flour
Thickens the milk mixture so it holds together when shaped.
Egg yolks
Enriches the mixture and helps bind it into a firm cutlet.
Egg
Creates a sticky layer that helps bread crumbs adhere and brown when fried.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool before shaping. A hot, loose mixture is too soft to hold its shape. Cooling lets the flour-thickened milk and egg yolks set, so the cutlets keep their form in the frying oil.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, milk, butter, flour, egg, parsley, pepper):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

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