Name: To Fry Smelts
Ingredients: smelts; milk; cracker dust; beaten egg; salt pork; lard; fried parsley

Why it works: Milk and pork are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,386 recipes. Both carry 4-heptenal, which smells creamy, biscuit. The science ↓

To Fry Smelts

Ingredients

Directions

Clean the smelts thoroughly and handle them as little as possible.
Dip the smelts in milk, then coat them in cracker dust.
Next, dip them in beaten egg, and coat them in cracker dust again until well coated.
Fry slices of salt pork in lard until cooked, then remove the pork from the pan.
Add the coated smelts to the lard and fry until they are a light brown.
Serve the smelts on a napkin 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.

Milk + porktop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,386 recipes

Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).
Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together88,785 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Pork + parsleytop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,804 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Egg + parsleytop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,765 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Milk + parsleytop 26% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,011 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).