Skip to main content
Main

Fried Smelts

Fried smelts are smelt fish coated in breadcrumbs and fried, served with tartar sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Fried Smelts

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean the smelts and sprinkle with coarse sea salt and black pepper.

  2. Skewer the smelts into fancy shapes.

  3. Dip the smelts in bread crumbs, then in beaten egg, and again in bread crumbs.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry the smelts in deep frying oil until golden brown.

  2. Drain on a folded napkin, garnish with parsley and lemon, and serve with Sauce Tartare.

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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Smelt + saucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together103 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Smelts
The main fish, whose delicate flesh cooks quickly in hot oil.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden coating that browns when fried.
Egg
Binds the bread crumb coating so it adheres to the fish.
Deep frying oil
Cooks the fish quickly and drives browning of the crumb coating.

The step that matters

Frying the smelts until golden brown. Oil must be hot enough to crisp the coating quickly. If it is too cool, the crumbs absorb oil and turn greasy before the small fish is cooked 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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipes