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Fried Perch

A fried perch coated in flour, salt, and pepper, served with parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Fried Perch

Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Fried Perch

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Scale and clean the perch thoroughly, then dry them well.

  2. Dip the perch in a mixture of flour, coarse sea salt, and black pepper.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry the perch in hot lard until golden brown.

  2. Garnish with curled parsley before serving.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Perch
Forms the main body of the dish, cooking to a tender, flaky interior inside a crisp coating.
Flour
Forms a dry coating that crisps and browns in the hot fat.
Lard
Conducts heat to cook the fish quickly and gives the coating its golden, crisp finish.

The step that matters

Dry the perch well before dipping. Surface moisture turns to steam in hot fat and makes the flour coating soggy or cause it to fall off. Thoroughly dried fish lets the flour adhere and fry to a crisp, golden crust.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Jalapenofits better
  2. Turmericfits better
  3. Parsleythe original
  4. Marjoramfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, pepper. 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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