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To Dress Smelts and Herrings

A method of dressing smelts and herrings with flour, spices, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

To Dress Smelts and Herrings

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Run a long skewer or knitting needle through the eyes of the fish.

  2. Dust the fish with flour.

Grill or bake

  1. Rub a hot iron grid with mutton suet or chalk and prepare a clear fire.

  2. To bake, place the fish in a dish with butter, mixed spices, and vinegar.

Fry and serve

  1. For frying, dip the fish in a batter made of eggs, bread crumbs, flour, and seasonings.

  2. Fry the fish and serve on fried parsley.

  3. Serve the fish 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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Mutton + breadtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,488 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

Sprats or smelts
The main fish, whose flesh cooks through quickly over heat.
Eggs
Bind the batter and help it set into a crisp coating when fried.
Bread crumbs
Form a crunchy coating that browns when the fish is fried.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, keeping the fish moist while it bakes.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the fish.
Mutton suet or chalk
Used to grease the hot grid so the fish does not stick.

The step that matters

Dust the fish with flour before frying. A thin, dry flour layer helps the batter adhere evenly and gives a crisp, golden coating; damp fish without flour lets the batter slide off.

Swap the parsley

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against smelt, flour, mutton, butter, vinegar, egg, bread. 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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