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Fkied Smelts

Smelts are fried after being coated in milk, crumbs, beaten egg, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Fish and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,668 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓

Fkied Smelts

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the fish in cold salted water.

  2. Draw the fish at the gills without splitting them and wipe them dry.

Bread and fry

  1. Heat a frying kettle half full of fat until it is smoking hot.

  2. Dip the fish in milk, then in crumbs, then in beaten egg, and again in crumbs.

  3. Fry the fish in the hot fat until golden brown.

  4. Remove the fish with a skimmer and place them on brown paper to drain excess grease.

  5. Sprinkle with salt and 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. Fish + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  2. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  3. Fish + milktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,432 recipes

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

  4. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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 exterior around a tender interior.
Beaten egg
Binds the crumb coating so it adheres to the fish during frying.
Cracker or bread crumbs
Form a crisp, browned coating that protects the fish in hot fat.
Milk
Helps the crumbs stick to the fish as the first coating layer.

The step that matters

Heat the fat until smoking hot. If the fat is not hot enough, the breaded coating absorbs oil and becomes greasy instead of crisping quickly, while the fish may overcook before the coating browns.

“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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