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Smelts with Cream Sauce

Smelts are cleaned, seasoned, coated, sautéed, and served with a cream sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley 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 ↓

Smelts with Cream Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the smelts

  1. Clean the smelts and cut five diagonal gashes on each side.

  2. Season with salt, pepper, and lemon juice. Cover and let stand for 10 minutes.

Cook and make the sauce

  1. Roll the smelts in cream, dip in flour, and sauté in butter until cooked.

  2. Remove the smelts to a serving dish.

  3. In the pan, add 2 tablespoons of cream and cook for 3 minutes.

  4. Season the sauce with salt, pepper, and a few drops of lemon juice.

  5. Strain the sauce around the smelts and sprinkle with finely chopped parsley.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Smelts
The main fish, cooked whole and gashed so the seasoning penetrates and the flesh cooks evenly.
Cream
Coats the fish and, reduced in the pan, forms the sauce that gives it a creamy texture.
Flour
Dusted over the cream-coated fish, it helps form a light crust that browns in the butter.
Butter
Fat for sautéing that browns the coating and adds richness and flavour.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the fish and sharpens the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Sautéing the floured smelts in butter. Fish is delicate and cooks quickly; if the pan is too cool the flour coating absorbs fat and turns greasy, and if too hot it burns before the 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.

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