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Dressed Fish

A fish fillet coated in a milk and flour batter, fried, and served with tomato sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Tarragon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,563 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Dressed Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Mix milk and flour smoothly with a pinch of salt to make the batter.

  2. Add the egg yolks and salad oil, then fold in the whipped egg white gently.

  3. Set the batter aside while preparing the fish.

Prepare the fish

  1. Combine salad oil, tarragon, chili vinegar, chopped parsley, onion, pepper, and salt in a bowl.

  2. Fillet the sole, cut each fillet in half, and soak in the oil and vinegar mixture for about 10 minutes.

Fry and serve

  1. Dip each piece of fish in the batter and fry in boiling fat until golden.

  2. Garnish with fried parsley and serve with tomato sauce.

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. Tarragon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Tarragon + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Tarragon + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,547 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Forms the batter's structure once hydrated with milk.
Egg whites
Whipped and folded in to lighten the batter and help it puff while frying.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help the batter coat the fish and brown evenly.
Milk or cream
Hydrates the flour and adds moisture and tenderness to the batter.
Chili vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the fish.

The step that matters

Folding in the whipped egg white. Fold gently so the air bubbles in the whipped white are kept. Those bubbles give the batter lightness and help it puff when fried, so overmixing will leave it dense.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, flour, egg, tarragon, vinegar, parsley, pepper):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, flour, egg, tarragon, vinegar, parsley, pepper. 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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