Skip to main content
Main

Fried Mush

Fried Mush is a dish made from prepared mush coated in egg and flour, then fried in clarified butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Fried Mush

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mush

  1. Prepare the Mush as directed in No. 588.

  2. Add 2 tablespoons of butter to the cooked Mush and mix well.

  3. Pour the Mush into a buttered square pan, about 2 inches thick.

  4. Cover with buttered paper to prevent a crust and let it cool.

Fry and serve

  1. Once cold, cut into slices ¼ inch thick.

  2. Dip each slice into beaten eggs, then coat with flour.

  3. Fry the slices in clarified butter until golden brown.

  4. Drain on a napkin and serve.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Butter
Adds richness and flavour to the mush and helps the slices brown when fried.
Eggs
Coat the slices so they hold together and form a binding layer when fried.
Flour
Forms a dry coating that browns in the hot fat and gives the slices a crisp exterior.

The step that matters

Cover with buttered paper and let it cool. Covering keeps a skin from forming on the surface of the mush while it sets. Letting it cool fully firms the mush so the slices hold their shape when dipped and fried.

“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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes