Skip to main content
Main

To Fry Smelts

Fried smelts coated in flour, egg yolk, and breadcrumbs, served with parsley garnish and shrimp sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

To Fry Smelts

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Dry the smelts with a cloth and dip them in flour.

  2. Melt the butter or clear fat in a basin.

  3. In the melted fat, break the yolks of the eggs and mix well.

  4. Brush the egg mixture over the smelts, then dip them in bread crumbs.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry the smelts in very hot lard until golden brown.

  2. Serve the smelts on a napkin, garnished with parsley, and with shrimp sauce in a boat.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Butter + shrimptop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,931 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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, which is cooked whole and takes on the crisp coating.
Flour
Dry coating that helps the egg mixture stick to the fish.
Egg yolks
Bind the coating to the fish and help the crumbs brown.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden outer layer when fried.
Butter or clear fat
Adds richness and helps the egg mixture coat the fish evenly.

The step that matters

Fry the smelts in very hot lard until golden brown. Very hot fat seals the crumb coating quickly, so it browns and crisps before the delicate fish overcooks and absorbs grease. Fat that is too cool makes the coating soggy and greasy.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (smelt, flour, butter, egg, bread, shrimp, sauce):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Parsleythe original
  4. Garlicfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against smelt, flour, butter, egg, bread, shrimp, sauce. 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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipesOatmeal BreadOatmeal Bread51 recipes