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Frying Fish

A fried fish served with a wine and butter sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,154 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Frying Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and fry

  1. Dust the cleaned and dried fish with flour.

  2. Heat plenty of hog's lard or dripping in a frying pan until boiling.

  3. Fry the fish until golden brown, then drain on a cloth.

Make the sauce

  1. In the same pan, add claret or white wine, anchovy, salt, nutmeg, and ginger.

  2. Return the fish to the pan and simmer until the liquid is reduced by half.

  3. Remove the fish and stir in the butter and minced lemon until thickened.

Serve

  1. Rub a hot dish with shallot, place the fish in it, and pour the sauce over.

  2. Serve with additional melted butter if desired.

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. Ginger + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Nutmeg + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. White wine + buttertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Small fish
Forms the main body of the dish, cooked by frying until golden brown.
Flour
Dusting coats the fish, helping it brown and crisp during frying.
Claret or white wine
Forms the liquid that is reduced into the sauce, adding acidity and flavour.
Anchovy
Adds savoury depth to the sauce as it simmers with the wine.
Butter
Enriches the sauce with fat and helps thicken it as it is stirred in.
Lemon
Adds bright acidity that balances the rich fat and savoury sauce.

The step that matters

Frying the fish until golden brown. Fish held in fat that is not hot enough will absorb grease and turn soft instead of crisp. Bringing the fat to a boil before frying helps the flour coating brown quickly and seal the surface.

Swap the ginger

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, flour, white wine, anchovy, nutmeg, butter, lemon):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, flour, white wine, anchovy, nutmeg, butter, lemon. 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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