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Fried Perch

Fried perch is a fish dish prepared by coating with flour and frying in lard or drippings, then served with parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Fried Perch

Why it works: Flour and parsley are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,675 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Fried Perch

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wipe the fish well and dry them with a cloth.

  2. Lightly flour the fish all over.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry the fish in hot lard or drippings for 10 minutes.

  2. Place the fried fish on a hair sieve to drain.

  3. Serve on a hot dish garnished with sprigs 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Fish + parsleytop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,341 recipes

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

  3. Fish + flourtop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Perch fish
Forms the main body of the dish, cooked through by frying.
Flour
Forms a light coating that helps the surface brown and crisp in the hot fat.
Lard or drippings
Conducts heat to cook the fish and gives the coating its browned, crisp surface.

The step that matters

Drying the fish before flouring. Surface moisture turns to steam in hot fat and makes the flour coating gummy or prevent it from sticking, so the fish should be patted fully dry first.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, flour):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Turmericfits better
  3. Jalapenofits better
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, 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.

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