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Smelts, Broiled or Grilled

Grilled or broiled smelt fish served with coarse sea salt and optional lemon or anchovy sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Smelt and sauce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 103 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Smelts, Broiled or Grilled

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean and wipe the smelts.

  2. Coat them well with flour.

Grill

  1. Place them on a grill over gentle heat.

  2. Cook for about 3 minutes, then carefully turn them over.

  3. Cook for an additional 2-3 minutes until done.

Serve

  1. Transfer to a hot dish, sprinkle with coarse sea salt, and serve immediately.

  2. Serve with lemon or anchovy sauce if desired.

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. Smelt + saucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together103 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Anchovy + saucetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Smelt + anchovytop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Lemon + anchovytop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,080 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Smelts
Provide the delicate white flesh that cooks quickly and is the main component of the dish.
Flour
Forms a light coating that helps the skin brown and keeps the fish moist on the grill.

The step that matters

Turning the smelts. Fish is fragile and sticks when it is moved too early. Waiting until the surface releases from the grill, then turning gently once, keeps the skin intact and the flesh from breaking apart.

“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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