Why it works: Egg and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 22,662 recipes. Both carry (e)-2-octenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓
To Fry Plaice in Egg and Bread-crumbs, or Batter
Ingredients
Directions
Heat ½ cup of clarified dripping in a saucepan.
Wash the plaice in cold water and dry it with a cloth.
Remove the skin from the back of the fish, and cut off the head and tail.
Grate some bread-crumbs onto a piece of paper.
Cut the fish into slices or fillets.
Beat the egg lightly in a plate.
Dip the fish slices into the egg, coating them well.
Roll the egg-coated fish in the bread-crumbs, covering them completely.
Shake off any loose crumbs.
When the dripping is hot and smoking, carefully add the fish, avoiding touching it too much.
Fry the fish in batches, ensuring they do not touch each other.
Place a piece of whity-brown paper on a plate, and transfer the fried fish onto it to drain excess grease.
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.
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Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together22,662 recipes
Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
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