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Cat Fish

Fried catfish seasoned with cayenne pepper and coarse sea salt, coated in flour and optionally beaten egg and bread crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 22,662 recipes. Both carry (e)-2-octenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Cat Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Cut each fish in half along the back and stomach.

  2. Remove the upper part of the backbone near the head.

  3. Wash and dry the fish.

  4. Season with cayenne pepper and coarse sea salt.

Coat and fry

  1. Dredge the fish in flour.

  2. For a variation, dip in beaten egg and coat with bread crumbs before frying.

  3. Alternatively, dip in beaten egg only and fry.

  4. Fry in hot lard until light 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. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

  2. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Pepper + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Catfish + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together110 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (grass, green).

Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Flour
Forms a dry coating that helps the fish brown and crisp when fried.
Lard
Conducts heat for frying and gives the coating a golden, crisp surface.
Beaten egg
Helps the flour or bread crumb coating adhere to the fish.

The step that matters

Drying the fish before dredging. Surface moisture turns flour into a gummy paste and steams the fish instead of letting the coating crisp in the hot fat. Drying the fish well helps the coating stick and brown.

“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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