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Fried Red Snapper

Fried Red Snapper is thinly sliced snapper coated in egg and crushed crackers, fried in lard, served with parsley butter gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Fried Red Snapper

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the red snapper into thin slices from the bone.

  2. Brown the crackers and roll them very fine.

  3. Beat the eggs and season with salt and pepper.

Fry

  1. Heat the lard until very hot.

  2. Dip the fish slices in the egg, then coat with the crushed crackers.

  3. Fry the coated fish slices in the hot lard until golden brown.

Make the gravy

  1. Prepare a gravy with parsley and butter after removing the fish from the pan.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Parsley + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  3. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Snapper + buttertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together75 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Egg + parsleytop 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

Red snapper
Forms the main body of the dish, cooked into tender, flaky slices.
Eggs
Bind the cracker coating to the fish so it adheres during frying.
Crackers
Form a crisp, browned crust that protects the fish while it fries.
Lard
Conducts heat for frying and helps the coating turn golden and crisp.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the gravy, with a smooth, rounded flavour.

The step that matters

Fry the coated fish slices in the hot lard until golden brown. The lard must be very hot before the fish goes in; otherwise the coating absorbs fat and turns greasy instead of crisp. Thin slices cook quickly, so they should be watched closely to avoid drying out.

“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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