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Cat Fish

A dish of boiled catfish served with optional garlic or parsley, then either baked in pastry or fried in beaten egg and cornmeal.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Garlic and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,308 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Cat Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean the catfish.

Boil

  1. Boil the catfish in weak salt water with a clove of garlic or parsley, if desired.

  2. If making a pie, use only parsley.

Finish

  1. Once cooked, lay the fish in a pan with pastry and cover with a top crust.

  2. To fry, dip the fish in beaten egg and then coat with cornmeal.

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. Garlic + parsleytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,308 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Clove + parsleytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Clove + garlictop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,368 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  4. Catfish + garlictop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together133 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

  5. Parsley + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,765 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Catfish
Forms the main body of the dish, providing the flaky meat that is cooked and served.
Beaten egg
Helps the cornmeal coating adhere to the fish and promotes browning when fried.
Cornmeal
Forms a crisp, golden coating when the fish is fried.
Pastry
Forms the top crust that encloses the cooked fish in a pie.

Swap the clove

The recipe marks clove as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (catfish, garlic, parsley, egg):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Dillfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against catfish, garlic, parsley, egg. 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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