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Fish Croquettes

Fish croquettes made from minced fish, cream, egg, milk, flour, and seasonings, then fried and served with buttered bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 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 croquette mixture

  1. In a bowl, combine minced fish with cream.

  2. Beat the egg and mix it with milk and flour until smooth.

  3. Combine this mixture with the fish, seasoning with pepper, salt, parsley, and lemon juice.

Shape and coat

  1. Shape the mixture into pear shapes using your hands.

  2. Dip each croquette into beaten egg, then coat with bread crumbs.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry in hot lard until golden brown.

  2. Garnish with parsley and serve with thin slices of buttered brown bread.

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. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Fish + milktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,432 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold cooked fish
Forms the main body of the croquettes and gives their savory flavor.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, keeping the filling soft and tender.
Egg
Binds the mixture so the croquettes hold their shape.
Flour
Thickens the batter-like mixture and helps it bind to the fish.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden coating when fried.

The step that matters

Frying in hot lard. If the lard is not hot enough, the coating absorbs fat and becomes greasy before it browns, and the filling may not set properly. Frying at a steady high heat gives a crisp, golden exterior.

Swap the parsley

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

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

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