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To Fry Bass or Other Fresh Fish

A method for frying fresh fish, seasoned with salt and pepper, coated in cornmeal, and cooked in pork or lard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Fish and pork work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 668 recipes. Both carry 4-heptenal, which smells creamy, biscuit. The science ↓

To Fry Bass or Other Fresh Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean the fish and lay the pieces on a cloth to dry.

  2. Fry four or five slices of pork in a skillet, or heat lard until hot.

  3. Season the fish with coarse sea salt and black pepper.

  4. Dip the fish in cornmeal and place in the skillet.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry until golden brown and serve hot.

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. Fish + porktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together668 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  2. Pepper + porktop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,121 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Fish + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked 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

Cornmeal
Forms a crisp, golden coating that browns and protects the fish as it fries.
Pork or lard
Provides hot fat for frying, conducting heat and adding flavor to the crust.

The step that matters

Heating the pork or lard before frying. The fat must be hot before the fish goes in. Hot fat seals the cornmeal coating quickly, so it crisps instead of soaking up grease and turning 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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