Skip to main content
Main

Trenton Falls Fry

A fried fish dish from Trenton Falls, coated in breadcrumbs and served on parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Trenton Falls Fry

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Soak small fish in lemon juice, salt, pepper, and chopped herbs, then remove and drain them.

  2. Stuff fish with bread crumbs soaked in milk and mixed with egg yolks.

  3. Sprinkle stuffed fish with flour.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry until golden brown.

  2. Serve on a bed of parsley.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Small fish
Forms the main body of the dish and carries the stuffing and coating.
Bread crumbs
Soaked in milk, they bind the stuffing and keep it moist while frying.
Egg yolks
Bind the bread crumb stuffing together so it holds its shape.
Flour
Dusted on the stuffed fish, it helps the outside brown and crisp when fried.
Lemon juice
Acidity from the soak brightens the flavour of the fish.

The step that matters

Fry until golden brown. Frying at a steady, moderate heat cooks the fish through while the flour coating browns. Too hot and the outside burns before the stuffing is cooked; too cool and the fish absorbs oil and turns greasy.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, lemon, pepper, bread, milk, egg, flour):

  1. Parsleythe original
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Marjoramfits about as well
  4. Tarragonfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, lemon, pepper, bread, milk, egg, flour. 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

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesFried FishFried Fish120 recipesFish CroquettesFish Croquettes81 recipes