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To Fry Smelts

A fried fish dish using smelts coated in cornmeal and optionally egg and bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Fish and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,668 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓

To Fry Smelts

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mix salt and pepper into the cornmeal.

  2. Coat the fish in the cornmeal mixture.

Fry

  1. Heat the lard until very hot in a frying pan.

  2. Fry the coated fish in the hot lard until cooked through but not browned.

  3. For a richer crust, dip the fish in beaten egg and then coat with grated bread before frying.

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. Fish + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  2. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  3. Pepper + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Fish + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,948 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Fish + eggtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,782 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Cornmeal
Forms the crisp coating that encloses the fish while it fries.
Lard
Conducts heat to cook the fish and gives the coating a golden, crisp surface.
Egg
Optional binder that helps the grated bread stick for a richer, thicker crust.

The step that matters

Fry in very hot lard. If the lard is not very hot, the coating absorbs fat and turns greasy instead of crisping quickly. Frying hot seals the coating so the fish cooks through without soaking up oil.

“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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