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Fried Plaice

Fried plaice fillets coated in flour, egg, and breadcrumbs, then fried until golden and served with fried parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Fried Plaice

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Fillet the plaice and cut each fillet into three or four pieces.

  2. On a plate, mix flour with pepper and salt.

  3. Dip each piece of fish into the flour mixture.

Coat and fry

  1. Brush the fish with beaten egg, then dip into breadcrumbs.

  2. Flatten the breadcrumbs onto the fish with a dry knife.

  3. Fry in boiling oil until golden brown.

  4. Drain well and serve on a dish garnished with fried parsley.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + parsleytop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,765 recipes

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

Flour and egg 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

Plaice
Provides the white flesh that becomes flaky and tender when fried.
Flour
Dries the fish surface so the coating adheres and begins to brown.
Egg
Acts as a binder that holds the breadcrumbs to the fish.
Breadcrumbs
Form a crisp, golden crust during frying.

The step that matters

Fry in boiling oil until golden brown. The oil must be hot enough to crisp the breadcrumb coating quickly. If it is too cool, the coating absorbs oil and turns greasy while the fish overcooks.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Turmericfits about as well
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Nutmegfits about as well
  4. Jalapenofits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, pepper, egg. 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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