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Smelts, to Bake

Baked smelt fish coated in breadcrumbs and butter, seasoned with salt, cayenne, and lemon, garnished with fried parsley and lemon wedges.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Smelts, to Bake

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

  1. Wash and dry the smelts thoroughly.

  2. Arrange the smelts in a flat baking dish.

Season and bake

  1. Cover the smelts with bread crumbs and dot with pieces of butter.

  2. Season with salt and cayenne.

  3. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for 15 minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Just before serving, add a squeeze of lemon juice and garnish with fried parsley and lemon wedges.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  3. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  4. Bread + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,588 recipes

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

  5. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Smelts
Are the main protein, cooking gently in the oven and taking on the flavour of the crumbs and butter.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, browned crust over the fish while keeping the flesh moist beneath.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, and helps the crumbs brown as it melts.

The step that matters

Drying the smelts before baking. Surface water turns to steam in the oven and softens the crumb coating, so thorough drying helps the crumbs stay crisp and the crust brown.

“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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