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Fried Fish with Sauce

Fried fish pieces coated in cornmeal served with a sauce of egg yolks, sweet oil, mustard, vinegar, Worcestershire sauce, and pickled cucumbers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and cucumber match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,281 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Fried Fish with Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Cut the fish into pieces about 4 inches square.

  2. Season the fish with salt and pepper.

  3. Roll each piece in cornmeal.

Fry and make the sauce

  1. Fry the fish in boiling lard until light brown.

  2. For the sauce, cream the egg yolks with sweet oil, mustard, and salt.

  3. Stir in vinegar and Worcestershire sauce or walnut ketchup.

  4. Add finely chopped pickled cucumbers.

Serve

  1. Arrange the fish around the edge of a dish and place the sauce in the center.

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. Mustard + cucumbertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,281 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Vinegar + cucumbertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,734 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  4. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Pepper + cucumbertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,991 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Emulsify with the oil and mustard to give the sauce a thick, creamy body.
Cornmeal
Forms a crisp, golden coating on the fish as it fries.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, creamy sauce.
Pickled cucumbers
Add tart crunch and acidity to the sauce.
Mustard
Adds sharpness and helps stabilise the emulsified sauce.

The step that matters

Cream the egg yolks with the oil. Yolks must be worked slowly with the oil so it emulsifies into a smooth, thick sauce. Adding the oil too fast, or adding the vinegar before the emulsion forms, can cause it to split and look greasy.

Swap the cucumber

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, egg, mustard, vinegar, sauce):

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Cucumberthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, egg, mustard, vinegar, sauce. 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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