Skip to main content
Main

To Fry Smelts

Smelts are coated in egg yolk and breadcrumbs and fried until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Egg and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 22,662 recipes. Both carry (e)-2-octenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

To Fry Smelts

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Draw the smelts at the gills without opening them.

  2. Wash and dry the smelts thoroughly with a cloth.

Coat and fry

  1. Dip the smelts into the beaten egg yolk.

  2. Coat the smelts with bread crumbs mixed with a small amount of flour.

  3. Fry the smelts until they are a clear golden brown.

Serve

  1. Serve immediately.

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

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

  2. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Smelt + flourtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together164 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Smelt + breadtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together150 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Bread + flourtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,383 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Fresh smelts
Provide the main body of the dish, cooked whole and kept moist inside by the coating.
Egg yolk
Acts as a binder so the bread crumbs and flour stick to the fish.
Finest bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden coating that browns during frying.
Flour
Dries the surface of the fish slightly so the crumb coating adheres and crisps.

The step that matters

Drying the smelts before coating. Any water left on the fish turns to steam in hot oil, which pushes the coating off and keeps it from crisping. Thorough drying helps the egg and crumbs stay attached and brown evenly.

“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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipesOatmeal BreadOatmeal Bread51 recipes