Why it works: Fish and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,948 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓
Fried Fish
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Mix the meal, salt, and pepper in a bowl.
Wipe the fish dry.
Roll the fish in the meal mixture.
Fry and serve
Fry the fish in plenty of very hot lard until golden brown.
Serve immediately.
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.
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Fish + peppertop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together3,948 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Fish
- Forms the main body of the dish, cooking through in the hot fat.
- Meal
- Forms a coating that browns and crisps when fried in hot fat.
- Lard
- Conducts heat to brown and crisp the coating while cooking the fish.
The step that matters
Fry in very hot lard. Very hot fat quickly sets and browns the meal coating, so it turns crisp rather than soft. Cooler fat soaks into the coating and makes the fish greasy and soggy.
“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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