Skip to main content
Main

Fried Halibut

Fried halibut coated in cracker dust and fried in lard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Egg and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 33% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 50,580 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Fried Halibut

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash and dry the halibut slices, then remove the skin.

  2. Season the fish with coarse sea salt and black pepper.

  3. Dip the slices in the beaten egg, then coat with fine cracker dust.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat lard in a pan until boiling hot.

  2. Fry the fish until golden brown on both sides.

  3. Drain and serve hot.

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. Egg + peppertop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together50,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Egg and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 50,580 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

Halibut
Provides the main flesh that cooks through while the coating crisps.
Beaten egg
Binds the cracker dust to the fish so the coating holds during frying.
Fine cracker dust
Forms a crisp, golden coating that browns in the hot fat.
Lard
Frying fat that conducts heat evenly and browns the coating.

The step that matters

Frying in hot lard. The lard must be boiling hot before the fish goes in. Hot fat sets the coating quickly so it turns crisp and golden rather than soaking up grease and becoming soggy.

“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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes