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Pan-fish

Pan Fish is a dish where fish are fried in a thick-bottomed pan with lard, served with lemon slices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Fish and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,889 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Pan-fish

Ingredients

Directions

Fry the first side

  1. Place the larger fish in a thick-bottomed frying pan with heads facing the same direction.

  2. Fill the spaces with smaller fish.

  3. Fry until the fish are brown and ready to turn.

  4. Cover the fish with a dinner plate.

  5. Drain off the fat.

  6. Invert the pan to leave the fish unbroken on the plate.

Fry the other side and serve

  1. Return the lard to the pan.

  2. Heat the lard.

  3. Slip the fish back into the pan.

  4. Fry the other side until brown.

  5. Drain again.

  6. Turn the fish onto a plate as before.

  7. Transfer the fish to a warm platter.

  8. Garnish with lemon slices.

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 + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,889 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

Larger fish
Form the base layer and hold their shape while the pan keeps the fish together.
Smaller fish
Fill the gaps between the larger fish so the pan is covered evenly.
Lard
Conducts heat and browns the fish surface while adding richness.

The step that matters

Invert the pan onto the plate. Fish is fragile and sticks until its crust forms. Waiting until the underside is firmly browned and the fat is drained lets the fish release whole instead of tearing apart.

“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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