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Fried Roe

Fried roe is a dish of boiled fish eggs coated in egg and cracker crumbs, then fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Roe and egg work together. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 243 recipes. Both carry (e)-2-octenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Fried Roe

Ingredients

Directions

Cook and coat

  1. Cook the roe in boiling salted water with vinegar for 10 minutes, then drain the roe.

  2. Roll the roe in beaten egg, then in cracker crumbs.

  3. Season with salt and pepper.

Fry

  1. Fry in hot fat 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. Roe + eggtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together243 recipes

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

  2. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

  3. Roe + vinegartop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together136 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  4. Roe + peppertop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together360 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  5. Vinegar + eggtop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,922 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Vinegar and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,922 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

Roe
The main ingredient, which the whole dish is built around.
Beaten egg
Acts as a binder so the cracker crumbs stick to the roe.
Cracker crumbs
Form a crisp, golden coating that browns when fried.
Hot fat
Conducts heat to brown and crisp the coating while cooking the roe.

The step that matters

Fry in hot fat until brown. The fat must be hot enough to set and brown the crumb coating quickly. If it is too cool, the coating absorbs oil and turns greasy, and the roe can overcook before the crust forms.

“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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