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Filleted Plaice

Filleted Plaice is a dish of fish fillets coated in egg and breadcrumbs, fried in lard, served with melted butter sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Filleted Plaice

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the plaice into four fillets and divide each fillet into two or three pieces.

  2. Dry the pieces with a clean cloth.

  3. Beat the egg in a plate.

  4. Dip the fish pieces in the egg, then coat them with fine bread crumbs.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat lard in a frying pan.

  2. Fry the fish for three minutes.

  3. Remove the fish and place it on kitchen paper to absorb excess fat.

  4. Serve with melted butter 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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  3. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Bread + saucetop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,934 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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
Forms the main body of the dish, cooking through to flaky white flesh when fried.
Egg
Binds the fine bread crumbs to the fish so the coating sticks during frying.
Fine bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden coating that browns in the hot lard.
Lard
Conducts heat to crisp and brown the coating while frying the fish.

The step that matters

Dry the pieces with a clean cloth. Surface moisture would keep the egg and crumbs from adhering and would steam the coating instead of letting it crisp in the hot fat.

“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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