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To Fry Brook Trout, or Any Other Small Fish

A quick fried fish dish using butter, lard, cornmeal, pepper, and coarse sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Fish and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,488 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

To Fry Brook Trout, or Any Other Small Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Clean the fish and let them rest for a few minutes wrapped in a clean, dry towel.

  2. Season the fish with pepper and coarse sea salt.

  3. Roll the fish in cornmeal.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat the butter and lard in a pan.

  2. Fry the fish until golden brown.

  3. Drain on a sieve and serve hot.

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. Fish + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Fish + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,948 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Small fish (brook trout)
Provides the main protein; its skin and flesh cook quickly in hot fat.
Cornmeal
Forms a crisp, golden coating that browns in the hot fat and protects the flesh.
Butter
Adds rich flavor and helps the coating brown in the frying fat.
Lard
Provides a high-temperature frying fat that browns the coating evenly and crisply.

The step that matters

Fry the fish until golden brown. The fat must be hot enough before the fish goes in. If it is too cool, the cornmeal coating absorbs oil and turns greasy instead of crisp, and the fish steams and sticks. Frying at a steady high heat sears the coating quickly, sealing in moisture.

“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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