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Shell Fish to Fry Fish

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Wheat and bread match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 209 recipes. Both carry 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline, which smells popcorn, roasted. The science ↓

Shell Fish to Fry Fish

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Clean the fish thoroughly and dry it with a towel.

  2. Roll the fish in wheat flour, rolled crackers, grated stale bread, or cornmeal.

  3. Heat a thick-bottomed frying pan with plenty of sweet lard, adding 1 tablespoon of salt for each pound of lard.

  4. Once the lard is boiling hot, add the fish and fry gently until one side is a delicate brown.

  5. Turn the fish and fry the other side until done.

  6. Carefully remove the fish and serve quickly, or keep it covered to stay hot.

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. Wheat + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together209 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  3. Wheat + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,373 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Fish + wheattop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together37 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  5. Flour + breadtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,383 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and bread barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,383 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

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