Why it works: Pork and fish work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 668 recipes. Both carry 4-heptenal, which smells creamy, biscuit. The science ↓
Fried Fish
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the pan
Fry the salt pork in a large, deep pan until crisp and remove, leaving the fat in the pan.
Add enough lard or a mixture of butter and lard to the pan to reach a depth of ¼ inch.
Season the fat with salt and heat until hot but not smoking.
Fry the fish
Dry the fish pieces and coat them with flour, fine Indian meal, beaten egg, or pounded cracker crumbs.
Carefully place the fish in the hot fat, ensuring not to overcrowd the pan.
Fry until golden brown on one side, then turn to brown the other side.
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.
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Pork + fishtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together668 recipes
Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).
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Butter + fishtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together4,488 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Pork + buttertop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together13,933 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).
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Pork + flourtop 27% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together11,187 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.
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 dish, cooked through while its outside turns golden.
- Flour, fine indian meal, beaten egg, or pounded cracker crumbs
- Forms a coating that protects the fish and browns into a crisp crust in the hot fat.
- Lard or butter
- Conducts heat around the fish and browns the surface, adding richness and flavour.
- Salt pork
- Renders its fat into the pan and leaves crisp pieces, adding savoury flavour to the frying fat.
The step that matters
Heat the fat until hot but not smoking. Fat that is too cool soaks into the coating and makes it greasy, while smoking fat burns the coating before the fish cooks through. Overcrowding the pan also drops the fat temperature, so pieces should be placed with room between them.
“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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