Skip to main content
Main

To Fry Smelts

Fried smelts coated in flour, eggs, and breadcrumbs, served with melted butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

To Fry Smelts

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean the smelts without washing them excessively.

  2. Dry the smelts with a cloth.

  3. Lightly flour the smelts.

  4. Dip the floured smelts in beaten eggs.

  5. Sprinkle fine bread crumbs over the smelts.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat lard in a pan until boiling.

  2. Fry the smelts until they are a nice pale brown.

  3. Remove the smelts and drain them on a cloth.

  4. Serve with plain melted butter.

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

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

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Flour and butter 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

Smelts
The main fish, whose delicate flesh is cooked through quickly in hot fat.
Flour
Dry coating that helps the egg adhere and gives a light, crisp surface.
Eggs
Liquid binder that holds the bread crumbs to the fish during frying.
Fine bread crumbs
Outer coating that becomes crisp and golden in the hot fat.
Lard
Frying fat that conducts heat evenly and browns the coating.

The step that matters

Fry the smelts until pale brown. Smelts are small and thin, so they cook through in minutes. Frying in lard that is hot but not smoking seals the coating quickly, keeping the fish moist while it turns golden. Overcooking dries the flesh.

“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 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipesOatmeal BreadOatmeal Bread51 recipes