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Fried Crayfish

A dish of crayfish pieces coated in anchovy-seasoned batter and fried until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Fried Crayfish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the white meat from the crayfish and cut it into pieces about 2 inches long and 1 inch wide.

  2. Make a frying batter and season it with anchovy, lemon juice, pepper, and salt.

Fry and serve

  1. Dip the crayfish pieces into the batter and plunge them into hot fat.

  2. Fry until golden brown, then drain on kitchen paper for a few minutes.

  3. Pile the fried crayfish on a dish and garnish with fried 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 + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Crayfish + anchovytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together61 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Crayfish + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together162 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Anchovy + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,080 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Anchovy + peppertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Crayfish
Provides the main protein, which firms and turns tender-sweet when fried.
French frying batter
Forms a crisp, golden coating that seals in moisture during frying.
Anchovy
Adds a savoury depth of flavour to the batter.

The step that matters

Plunge the crayfish into hot fat. If the fat is not hot enough, the batter absorbs oil and turns greasy instead of crisping quickly. Hot fat sets the coating fast, so the crayfish stays moist inside.

“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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