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Tenderloin of Trout, or Any Other Fish

Fried fish tenderloin coated in flour, served with a mayonnaise, caper, parsley, and onion sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Capers and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,550 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Tenderloin of Trout, or Any Other Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and fry

  1. Season the fish with salt and pepper.

  2. Dip the fish in milk, then coat it in flour.

  3. Fry the fish until golden brown.

Make the sauce

  1. In a bowl, mix mayonnaise, capers, parsley, and onion to make the sauce.

Serve

  1. Serve the fish with the sauce on the side.

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. Capers + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,550 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Capers + flourtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,024 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Capers + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,381 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Fish
Main protein that cooks through and turns flaky when fried.
Flour
Forms a coating that browns and crisps in the hot fat.
Milk
Gives the flour a moist layer to cling to before frying.
Mayonnaise
Creamy base of the sauce, adding fat and richness.
Capers
Add a briny, sharp flavour that cuts the richness of the mayonnaise.
Onion
Adds a sharp aroma and bite to the sauce.

The step that matters

Fry the fish until golden brown. Fish is delicate and cooks quickly. Browning the flour coating crisps the outside while the flesh cooks through. Overcooking dries the fish and makes it tough and crumbly.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Arrowrootfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, capers, milk, flour, parsley, 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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