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To Bake Smelts

Baked smelts coated in breadcrumbs and butter, seasoned with salt and cayenne, served with lemon juice and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

To Bake Smelts

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Wash and dry the smelts thoroughly with a cloth.

  2. Arrange the smelts in a flat baking dish.

Bake

  1. Cover the smelts with bread crumbs and dot with pieces of butter.

  2. Season with salt and cayenne.

  3. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for 15 minutes.

Serve

  1. Just before serving, add a squeeze of lemon juice and garnish with fried parsley and lemon wedges.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  3. Mace + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,268 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  5. Bread + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,588 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Smelts
Serve as the main protein, cooking gently in their own juices under the crumb topping.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden crust over the fish while keeping the flesh moist.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, and helps the crumbs brown in the oven.
Mace
Adds a warm, aromatic spice flavour that complements the fish and butter.

The step that matters

Bake at 400°F (200°C) for 15 minutes. Baking only as long as stated keeps the small fish moist and tender. Overcooking dries the flesh and can burn the butter-soaked crumbs before the smelts are cooked through.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (smelt, bread, butter, lemon, parsley):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against smelt, bread, butter, lemon, parsley. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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