Skip to main content
Main

To Fey Smelts

Smelt fish coated in milk, cracker crumbs, and eggs, then fried until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Milk and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 88,785 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

To Fey Smelts

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Dry the smelts on a towel.

Coat

  1. Dip them in milk.

  2. Coat with cracker crumbs.

  3. Dip in beaten eggs.

  4. Coat with cracker crumbs again.

Fry

  1. Fry in hot fat until golden brown.

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

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

  2. Smelt + milktop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together38 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Smelt + eggtop 38% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together174 recipes

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the crumb coating so it adheres to the fish during frying.
Cracker crumbs
Form a crisp, browning crust around the fish when fried.
Milk
Helps the first crumb layer stick to the smelts.

The step that matters

Fry in hot fat until golden brown. If the fat is not hot enough, the coating absorbs oil and turns greasy instead of crisp. Starting with hot fat seals the crumbs quickly, so the coating browns and the fish stays 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes