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Fried Filleted Plaice

Fried filleted plaice seasoned with salt, pepper, lemon juice, coated in egg and breadcrumbs, then fried until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Fried Filleted Plaice

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Fillet the plaice and remove the black skin.

  2. Season each fillet with salt, pepper, and lemon juice.

  3. Roll or tie the fillets.

  4. Coat the fillets with egg and then breadcrumbs.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat sufficient cooking fat in a pan until it produces blue smoke.

  2. Fry the fillets in the hot fat until golden brown.

  3. Drain the fried fillets on kitchen paper.

  4. Arrange on a warm serving dish and garnish with parsley and lemon.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  4. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  5. Egg + parsleytop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,765 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

Lemon and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 44,316 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

Plaice fillets
Provide the delicate white flesh that is cooked through and served as the main component.
Egg
Acts as a binder so the breadcrumbs adhere to the fillets during frying.
Breadcrumbs
Form a crisp golden coating that browns in the hot fat and protects the fish.
Cooking fat
Transfers heat to the coating, producing browning and a crisp crust.

The step that matters

Frying in hot fat. The fat must be hot enough to brown the breadcrumb coating quickly. If it is too cool, the coating absorbs fat and turns greasy before it crisps, and the delicate fish may overcook while the crust lags behind.

“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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