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Fried Pickerel

Fried Pickerel is a fish fillet coated in flour or cracker crumbs and fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 106,462 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Fried Pickerel

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Roll the cleaned and dried pickerel in a mixture of salt, pepper, and flour.

  2. Alternatively, dip the fish in beaten eggs and then roll in seasoned cracker crumbs.

Fry

  1. Heat cottolene or oil in a deep pan until it reaches a boil.

  2. Fry the coated pickerel quickly until golden brown.

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 + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Pepper + eggtop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together50,580 recipes

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

Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Pickerel
The main fish, whose flesh cooks through while the coating turns crisp.
Flour
Forms a dry first coating that helps the crumbs or egg adhere and encourages browning.
Eggs
Act as a sticky binder so the cracker crumbs cling to the fish.
Seasoned cracker crumbs
Form a crisp, golden outer crust when fried.

The step that matters

Fry the coated pickerel quickly until golden brown. Frying in hot fat seals the coating fast, so it browns and crisps before the delicate fish overcooks and dries out. Fat that is not hot enough soaks in and makes the crust greasy.

“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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