Skip to main content
Main

Pan-fish

Pan-fried fish with optional smaller fish, cooked in lard and served with lemon slices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Fish and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,889 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Pan-fish

Ingredients

Directions

Fry the fish

  1. Place the fish in a thick-bottomed frying pan with heads facing the same direction.

  2. Fill the spaces with smaller fish if using.

  3. Fry until the fish are brown and ready to turn.

  4. Cover with a dinner plate, drain off the fat, then invert the pan to place the fish on the plate.

  5. Return the lard to the pan, heat it, and slip the fish back in.

  6. Fry the other side until brown, drain, and turn onto a plate as before.

Serve

  1. Transfer the fish to a warm platter and garnish with lemon slices.

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. Fish + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,889 recipes

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

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 and browns in the hot fat to develop a crisp, golden surface.
Lard or cooking fat
Conducts heat to the fish and browns its surface, adding richness and flavour.

The step that matters

Turning the fish. Turning the fish only once it is well browned lets a crust form that releases cleanly from the pan. Turning too early tears the skin and leaves it stuck to the pan.

“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

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesFried FishFried Fish120 recipesFish CroquettesFish Croquettes81 recipesScalloped CodScalloped Cod69 recipes