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Fried Smelts on Skewers

Fried smelts on skewers are small fish coated in breadcrumbs and fried, served hot with fried parsley and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon 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 ↓

Fried Smelts on Skewers

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean the smelts.

  2. Wipe them with a wet towel, then dry them with a clean towel.

  3. Heat the cooking fat in a frying pan until hot.

Coat the smelts

  1. Prepare a dish with beaten eggs.

  2. Prepare another dish with breadcrumbs seasoned with salt and pepper.

  3. Dip the smelts in milk.

  4. Coat them in the breadcrumbs, ensuring they are fully covered.

  5. Immerse the crumb-coated smelts in the beaten eggs.

  6. Coat them in breadcrumbs again.

  7. Skewer 4 to 6 smelts through the eyes or gills with a sharp skewer, being careful not to remove the crumbs.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry the skewered smelts in the hot fat until golden brown.

  2. Remove the fried smelts with a skimmer.

  3. Place them on brown paper in a dripping pan to keep warm.

  4. Serve the smelts hot, garnished with fried parsley and lemon.

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. Parsley + lemontop 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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  4. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Smelts
Provide the main fish, which cooks quickly and turns tender inside a crisp coating.
Beaten eggs
Act as a binder that helps the breadcrumbs stick to the fish.
Fine breadcrumbs
Form a crisp, golden-brown coating when fried.
Cooking fat
Conducts heat to brown and crisp the breadcrumb coating.

The step that matters

Frying in hot fat. The fat must be fully hot before the smelts go in. Hot fat sets the crumb coating quickly, so it turns golden and crisp instead of soaking up grease and becoming soggy.

“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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