Why it works: Fish and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 27% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,532 recipes. Both carry acetaldehyde, which smells pungent, ethereal. The science ↓
Fried Fish
Ingredients
Directions
The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.
Prepare
Dry the fish thoroughly.
Coat the fish in flour.
Fry
Heat the fat until very hot.
Quickly plunge the fish into the hot fat.
Cook fillets of sole for about 1 minute; whitebait for a few seconds.
Finish in the oven
For thicker fish, remove from fat when golden and place in a 400°F (200°C) oven for a few minutes.
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.
Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it
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.
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Fish + flourtop 27% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together2,532 recipes
Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Fish
- Is the main food cooked by frying, so its thickness decides how long it needs.
- Flour
- Forms a dry coating that crisps and browns in the hot fat.
- Frying fat
- Conducts heat evenly, cooking the fish quickly and browning the coating.
The step that matters
Plunge the fish quickly into very hot fat. Very hot fat seals the flour coating at once, so it turns crisp rather than soaking up oil and going greasy or sticking. Slow or cool frying lets the fish absorb fat and cook unevenly.
“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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