🍽️ Shunde Fried Fish Cake

Minced dace fish cake pan-fried golden, bouncy and fragrant.

Shunde Fried Fish Cake is a home-style specialty of Shunde in Foshan, again centered on local dace. The dace meat is scraped off, hand-chopped into a fish paste and stirred vigorously in one direction until springy, mixed with a little starch, salt and dried tangerine peel, then patted into small flat cakes. Pan-fried slowly with little oil until golden and fragrant on both sides, each cake has a crisp crust outside yet stays snowy-white and bouncy within. The bite is full of fish aroma and springy texture, the seared edges adding a rich, not heavy, fragrance. Shunde families serve it as a rice side, tea snack or congee companion, often alongside deboned fish soup and raw fish to show the clever reuse of one fish. Best eaten hot, with a dash of Worcestershire sauce or spiced salt to lift the savoriness, it is one of the most frequently seen home fish dishes on Shunde tables.