Skip to main content
Main

Fried Bass

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 in flour and season with coarse sea salt.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat a mixture of butter and lard in a pan over medium‑high heat.

  2. Fry the bass until golden brown on both sides.

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

  4. 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).

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

Bass
Forms the main body of the dish, cooking to flaky, moist flesh under a crisp coating.
Flour
Forms a dry coating that browns in the hot fat and helps the crust stay crisp.
Butter
Adds rich flavor and browns the surface of the fish as it fries.
Lard
Provides a high-heat frying fat that gives a crisp, golden crust without burning quickly.

The step that matters

Frying the bass until golden brown on both sides. Fat that is too cool lets the flour coating absorb oil and turn soggy, while overheating burns the butter solids before the fish cooks through. Holding medium-high heat and turning the fish once lets the crust set evenly and the flesh cook gently inside.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Jalapenofits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter. 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

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes