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Fried Bass

A fried fish dish made with bass or other white fish, seasoned with salt and pepper, coated in flour, and cooked in lard, butter, and bacon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Fish and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,488 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Fried Bass

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean and cut the fish into pieces.

  2. Season with coarse sea salt and black pepper.

  3. Dredge the fish in flour.

Fry

  1. In a skillet, heat lard and butter with a strip of bacon added.

  2. Fry the fish until it is light brown.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Fish + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,948 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

Bass
Is the main fish, cooked through with a crisp floured coating.
Flour
Forms a dry coating that browns and crisps in the hot fat.
Lard
Provides the frying fat that conducts heat evenly and browns the coating.
Butter
Adds richness and a toasty flavour to the frying fat.
Bacon strip
Flavours the frying fat with smoky, savoury aroma.

The step that matters

Frying the fish until light brown. The fish must be fried in hot enough fat so the floured coating crisps quickly and seals in moisture. Fat that is too cool lets the coating absorb oil and turn greasy, while overcooking dries the flesh.

“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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