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Sardine Fritters

Sardine fritters are battered sardines fried until golden, served with lemon juice, cayenne pepper, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Sardine Fritters

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sardines

  1. Drain the oil from the sardines and remove the skins and backbone.

  2. If large, divide the sardines in half; otherwise, keep them whole.

  3. Sprinkle lemon juice and cayenne pepper over the sardines.

Batter and fry

  1. In a bowl, mix flour and water to create a light batter.

  2. Dip each sardine into the batter, using about 2 teaspoons for each.

  3. Heat oil in a pan until boiling, then fry the sardines until golden.

  4. Drain on blotting paper and serve immediately with parsley garnish.

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

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

  3. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  4. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Lemon + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Sardines
Provide the main body and savoury flavour of the fritters.
All-purpose flour
Forms the light batter that coats the sardines and crisps when fried.
Water
Thins the flour into a batter that coats the fish evenly.

The step that matters

Frying the sardines until golden. Oil must be hot enough that the batter sets and browns quickly; if the oil is too cool, the coating absorbs oil and turns greasy instead of crisp.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, flour, parsley):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Limefits about as well
  3. Avocadofits less well
  4. Cherryfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, flour, 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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