Fish cakes can be served with basic tartar sauce or more fancy aioli sauce, kept simple to preserve the flavor of the fish or jazzed up with Parmesan cheese and garlic. The choice is yours. This recipe from Maggie Ritchie give a good base for fish cakes that is still followed today in upscale kitchens across America. Make it with salmon and add a mango salsa for something interesting, try it with cod and top with a tangy chutney. Whatever sounds good to you, that’s the beauty of cooking at home!

A note, Maggie has written “equal quantities of cold mashed potato.” What she means here is to use the same volume of potatoes as you do of fish. Also, rather than using boiling fat, try using canola oil. Olive oil would also be fine but if you take it to too high of a temperature it can smoke.

Fish Cakes

Take any cold fish that may be in the house, free it from the bone with two forks. Put it into a basin, add to it a pinch salt and a pinch cayenne pepper & equal quantities of cold mashed potato. Bind with an egg, mix these together with a spoon & take a little of the mixture on to a floured board. Shape it with the back of a knife into flat cakes, then dip them into a beaten egg & bread crumbs. Fry them in boiling fat.