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Fried Bass

Fried Bass is a whole bass coated in flour and fried in butter and lard, garnished with parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Fried Bass

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Dredge the cleaned bass with flour and season with coarse sea salt.

  2. Heat a mixture of half butter and half lard or beef dripping in a pan.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry the fish until golden brown.

  2. Remove the fish from the fat and drain in a hot colander.

  3. Garnish with parsley before serving.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  4. Beef + parsleytop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,866 recipes

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

  5. Butter + beeftop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,847 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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

Flour
Forms a thin, crisp coating that browns and protects the fish skin during frying.
Butter
Adds rich flavour and helps the fish brown in the frying fat.
Beef dripping or lard
Conducts high, even heat so the fish fries crisp and golden rather than steaming.

The step that matters

Keep the fat hot when frying. If the fat is not hot enough when the fish goes in, the coating absorbs fat and turns greasy instead of crisp. Frying at a steady high heat sears the coating quickly and keeps the fish moist inside.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, butter, beef):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, beef. 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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