Why it works: Smelt and haddock share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓
Fried Fish
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Do not remove the heads and tails from the small fish.
Clean, wipe, and dry the fish.
Dredge the fish with salt and pepper.
Roll the fish in fine sifted bread crumbs and then in beaten egg.
Fry
Heat cottolene in a frying pan.
Saute the fish, browning one side, then the other, or plunge in deep, hot cottolene.
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.
Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it
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.
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Smelt + haddocktop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together7 recipes
Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
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Fish + breadtop 10% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together1,668 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).
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Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together22,662 recipes
Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).
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Pepper + breadtop 16% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together20,964 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Fish + haddocktop 17% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together257 recipes
Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Fish
- Forms the main body of the dish, cooked through by frying.
- Fine sifted bread crumbs
- Form a crisp golden coating that browns in the hot fat.
- Egg
- Binds the bread crumbs to the fish so the coating stays on during frying.
- Cottolene
- Frying fat that transfers heat to the fish and browns the coating.
The step that matters
Saute the fish, browning one side, then the other, or plunge in deep, hot cottolene.. The fat must be hot enough to brown the coating quickly. If it is too cool, the crumbs absorb fat and turn greasy while the fish overcooks inside.
“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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