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Fbibd Fish

Fried fish coated in flour and breadcrumbs, cooked after frying salt pork.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Fish and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,668 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓

Fbibd Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean, wash, and dry the small fish.

  2. Season the fish with coarse sea salt.

  3. Roll the fish in a mixture of Indian meal and flour.

Fry

  1. Fry slices of salt pork in a pan until brown, then remove the pork.

  2. Place the fish in the pan, skin side down, and fry until brown.

  3. Turn the fish to cook the other side.

  4. Optionally, dip the fish in beaten egg seasoned with salt and pepper, then roll in bread crumbs before frying in hot fat.

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. Fish + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  2. Fish + porktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together668 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  3. Pork + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,371 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Indian meal and flour
Forms a light coating that browns and crisps in the hot fat.
Egg
Binds the optional bread crumb coating so it adheres to the fish.
Salt pork
Renders fat into the pan that flavours and browns the fish.

The step that matters

Frying the fish skin side down. The fish must be dry before coating and fried in enough hot fat; moisture or a cool pan causes steaming instead of browning, and the coating can stick or fall off.

“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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