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Fried Fish

Fried fish pieces coated in crumbs, served with a cream sauce made from fish stock, cream, and egg yolk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Fried Fish

Why it works: Clove and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,768 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Fried Fish

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare the fish

  1. Prepare the fish and cut into uniform pieces.

  2. In a bowl, mix the egg yolk with the milk and beat slightly.

  3. Roll the fish pieces in bread or cracker crumbs, dip in the egg mixture, and roll again in crumbs.

Fry the fish

  1. Fry the fish in hot fat until golden brown.

Make the sauce

  1. For the sauce, cook the fish bone in enough water to cover it with the cloves, bay leaf, onion, and peppercorns for 20 minutes.

  2. Strain the mixture, add salt, and enough water to make 1 cup of stock.

  3. Make a white sauce using the fish stock instead of milk, then add the cream and boil for 10 minutes.

  4. Remove from heat and stir in the beaten egg yolk and minced 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Clove + parsleytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  3. Fish + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Clove + oniontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,901 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

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

What each ingredient does

Fish
Forms the main body of the dish, cooked by frying until golden.
Egg yolk
Binds the crumb coating to the fish and enriches the sauce for a smooth texture.
Bread or cracker crumbs
Forms a crisp, golden browned crust when fried.
Cream
Adds richness and body to the white sauce.

The step that matters

Frying the coated fish in hot fat. The fat must be smoking hot so the crumb coating browns quickly and seals, keeping the fish moist inside instead of greasy or falling apart.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, egg, milk, bread, onion, cream, parsley):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Celeryfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, egg, milk, bread, onion, cream, parsley. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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