Why it works: Egg and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 22,662 recipes. Both carry (e)-2-octenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓
Smelts Fried
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Make a slight opening at the gills of the smelts.
Draw out the insides by pressing between your thumb and finger, starting at the tail.
Coat and fry
Dip the smelts in the beaten egg, then coat with bread crumbs.
Fry in very hot lard until golden brown.
Serve
Drain the smelts, dust with coarse sea salt, and serve hot with tartar sauce.
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.
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Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together22,662 recipes
Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).
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Smelt + breadtop 22% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together150 recipes
Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
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Smelt + eggtop 38% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together174 recipes
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Smelts
- The small whole fish that are the main component and are cooked intact.
- Beaten egg
- Binds the bread crumbs to the fish so the coating stays in place during frying.
- Bread crumbs
- Form a crisp, golden coating that protects the fish while it fries.
- Lard
- Hot fat that fries the coating to browning and crispness.
The step that matters
Fry in very hot lard until golden brown. If the lard is not hot enough, the coating absorbs fat and turns greasy before it crisps, and the fish can cook unevenly. Very hot fat sets the crumb quickly, so the coating browns while the thin fish cooks through.
“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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