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To Pry Smelts

Breaded smelts fried in lard and served with shrimp sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Smelt and sauce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 103 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

To Pry Smelts

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Dry the smelts with a cloth.

  2. Dip the smelts in flour.

Make the egg coating

  1. Melt the butter or fat in a basin.

  2. Break the egg yolks into the melted butter and mix.

  3. Brush the egg mixture over the smelts.

  4. Dip the smelts in bread crumbs.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry the smelts in very hot lard until golden.

  2. Serve on a napkin, garnished with parsley, and with shrimp sauce in a boat.

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. Smelt + saucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together103 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  3. Butter + shrimptop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,931 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Smelts
The main fish, which is cooked whole and crisped in the coating and hot fat.
Flour
Dry coating that helps the egg mixture and crumbs stick to the fish.
Egg yolks
Bind the butter and crumbs to the fish and help the coating brown.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden outer layer when fried.

The step that matters

Fry the smelts in very hot lard until golden. Very hot fat seals the coating quickly so it crisps and browns without soaking up grease. If the lard is not hot enough, the breading absorbs oil, turns soggy, and the fish cooks unevenly.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (smelt, flour, butter, egg, bread, shrimp, sauce):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Parsleythe original
  4. Garlicfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against smelt, flour, butter, egg, bread, shrimp, sauce. 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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