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Fried Fish

Fried fish seasoned with salt, coated in flour and cornmeal, served with fried salt pork and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Fried Fish

Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Fried Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean, wash, and drain the fish. Season with coarse sea salt.

  2. Mix flour and cornmeal together, then roll the fish in the mixture.

Fry

  1. Fry the salt pork in a pan until crisp and brown, then remove it.

  2. Add enough fish to cover the bottom of the pan and fry until brown on one side.

  3. Turn the fish and fry the other side until golden.

Serve

  1. Serve the fish on a hot dish with the fried salt pork as a garnish.

  2. For a fancier dish, season fish slices with salt and pepper, dip in beaten egg, roll in bread crumbs, and fry in boiling fat.

  3. Serve very hot, pouring melted butter over the fish and garnishing with parsley.

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.

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.

  1. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Fish + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

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

  4. Fish + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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, cooking to a crisp golden exterior around moist flesh.
Salt pork
Renders fat into the pan for frying and leaves crisp pieces that add savory flavor.
Flour
Forms a light coating that browns in the hot fat and helps the crust stay crisp.
Cornmeal
Adds a gritty, crunchy texture to the coating as it fries.
Eggs
Bind the crumb coating to the fish in the fancier version so it adheres during frying.
Butter
Adds richness and flavor when poured over the hot fish at serving.

The step that matters

Frying the fish in batches over steady heat. Crowding the pan drops the fat temperature, so fish steams and absorbs grease instead of browning. Enough fat and room in the pan let the coating crisp quickly while the flesh stays moist.

“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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