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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
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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. Ensure smelts are very fresh and clean them as necessary without excessive washing.

  2. Dry the smelts with a cloth and lightly flour them.

  3. Dip the floured smelts in beaten eggs and sprinkle with fine bread crumbs.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat boiling lard in a pan and fry the smelts until they are a nice pale brown.

  2. Be careful not to remove the light roughness of the crumbs.

  3. Drain the fried smelts on a drainer before serving.

  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; their delicate flesh is cooked through quickly in hot fat.
Flour
Dry coating that helps the egg wash and crumbs adhere to the fish.
Eggs
Liquid binder that makes the bread crumbs stick to the floured fish.
Fine bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden coating that browns in the hot lard.
Boiling lard
Cooking fat that conducts heat quickly, crisping the crumb coating and browning the fish.

The step that matters

Be careful not to remove the light roughness of the crumbs.. The loose crumb coating is what turns crisp and golden in the hot fat. Handling or brushing it off leaves bare fish that fries unevenly and dries out.

“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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