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Devilled Whitebait

A fried whitebait dish seasoned with flour, cayenne pepper, salt, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Devilled Whitebait

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove whitebait from the tin and pull the fish apart; drain.

  2. Sprinkle with flour, cayenne pepper, and salt.

  3. Place into a frying basket.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry in smoking fat for 3 minutes.

  2. Drain well and sprinkle with chopped parsley, pepper, and salt.

  3. 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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Whitebait
Forms the main body of the dish, cooking quickly to a crisp exterior.
Flour
Coats the fish so the surface crisps and browns when fried.
Cayenne pepper
Adds heat that defines the deviled flavour.

The step that matters

Fry in smoking fat. The fat must be very hot so the coated fish crisps quickly on the outside. If the fat is not hot enough, the whitebait absorbs oil and turns greasy instead of crisp.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, pepper):

  1. Jalapenofits better
  2. Turmericfits better
  3. Parsleythe original
  4. Marjoramfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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