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Whiting

A dish of small whiting fillets fried in butter and served in a brown gravy thickened with French potato flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Whiting

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Soak the small whiting in vinegar overnight.

  2. Dry the fish thoroughly with a cloth.

  3. Remove the fillets from the bone.

  4. Cut the fillets into neat pieces.

Coat and fry

  1. Dip the pieces in beaten egg.

  2. Coat the pieces with bread crumbs mixed with pepper, salt, and dried parsley.

  3. Fry in butter until brown on both sides, ensuring they are lightly cooked.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Prepare a brown gravy from beef, thickened with French potato flour.

  2. Add sherry if desired.

  3. Place the fillets in the gravy.

  4. Simmer gently for five minutes before serving.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

  3. Pepper + beeftop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Bread + beeftop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  5. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Whiting
Forms the flaky white fish fillets that are the main component of the dish.
Eggs
Bind the bread crumb coating to the fish so it stays on during frying.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, browned outer crust when fried in butter.
Butter
Conducts heat for frying and browns the coating, adding richness.
French potato flour
Thickens the beef gravy to a smooth, coating consistency.
Vinegar
Acidity from the vinegar soak helps firm the fish flesh before cooking.

The step that matters

Fry in butter until brown on both sides, ensuring they are lightly cooked. Fish cooks quickly and turns dry and tough if overcooked, so the pieces should be removed once just cooked through. The gravy simmer that follows is short, so the fish should not be fully cooked before it.

“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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