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To Fry Smelts and Other Small Fish

Fried smelts coated in egg yolk, bread crumbs, and flour, served crisp with melted butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

To Fry Smelts and Other Small Fish

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Draw the smelts at the gills without opening them.

  2. Wash and dry the smelts thoroughly with a cloth.

Coat and fry

  1. Dip the smelts into the beaten egg yolk.

  2. Coat the smelts with bread crumbs mixed with flour.

  3. Fry the smelts in hot oil until they are a clear golden brown.

Serve

  1. Serve the smelts very crisp and dry with melted butter in a tureen.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  4. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Smelts
Small whole fish that become crisp and tender when fried.
Beaten egg yolk
Acts as a binder so the crumb coating adheres to the fish.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp golden crust during frying.
Flour
Dries the fish surface and helps the coating stick and brown.

The step that matters

Fry in hot oil until clear golden brown. If the oil is not hot enough, the coating absorbs oil and turns greasy instead of crisp. Frying at a high temperature quickly sets the crumb crust and browns it, while keeping the fish moist inside.

“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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