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Modern Cookery

Breaded fish fillets fried in lard until golden brown.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 ↓

Modern Cookery

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the flesh from the bones of the fish, in fillets if large.

Bread and fry

  1. Dip the fillets in egg.

  2. Coat the fillets with fine bread crumbs.

  3. Fry the coated fillets in plenty of lard until golden 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 + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

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

  3. Fish + eggtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,782 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

Fish (plaice)
Forms the main body of the dish, cooking to tender, flaky flesh inside a crisp coating.
Egg
Acts as a binding layer so the bread crumbs adhere to the fish fillets.
Fine bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden coating that browns during frying.
Lard
Conducts heat to fry the coating evenly and promotes browning.

The step that matters

Fry the coated fillets in plenty of lard until golden brown. Enough hot fat keeps the coating crisp and browning even, while the fish cooks through gently. Too little fat or too low heat leads to greasy, soggy coating.

“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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