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Fried Smelts

Fried smelts are smelt fish coated in flour, eggs, and cracker crumbs, then fried in lard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Fried Smelts

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Open the smelts at the head, draw, wash, and wipe them dry.

  2. Roll the smelts in flour.

  3. Dip them in beaten eggs mixed with a little milk.

  4. Season with coarse sea salt and black pepper.

  5. Roll in cracker crumbs.

Fry

  1. Fry in hot lard until 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. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Smelt + flourtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together164 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Eggs
Beaten eggs with milk form a binding coat that helps the crumbs adhere.
Cracker crumbs
Form a crisp, browned outer crust when fried.
Flour
Dry coating that helps the egg wash stick to the fish.
Lard
Hot fat that cooks the coating quickly and browns it.

The step that matters

Fry in hot lard until brown. Fat that is not hot enough lets the coating soak up oil and turn greasy before it crisps. Hot fat sets the crumb crust quickly, so the fish cooks through while the coating browns.

“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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