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Whiting, Fried

Fried whiting coated in flour, egg, and breadcrumbs, then fried in lard and served with anchovy butter sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Whiting and anchovy share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 82 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Whiting, Fried

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Skin, clean, and dry the whiting.

  2. Fasten the tails in the mouths of the fish.

Coat the fish

  1. Coat the fish in flour.

  2. Beat the egg and paint it over the fish.

  3. Sprinkle finely grated bread crumbs on top.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry the fish in boiling lard for 5 minutes.

  2. Serve on a napkin garnished with parsley and sauce on the side.

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. Whiting + anchovytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together82 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Bread + anchovytop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,260 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanol (green, fruity).

  3. Egg + anchovytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,330 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Parsley + anchovytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,702 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Whiting
The main fish, which the coating and frying are applied to.
Flour
Dry first coating that helps the egg adhere to the fish.
Egg
Wet binder that holds the bread crumbs to the fish.
Bread crumbs
Crisp outer layer that browns during frying.
Lard
Frying fat that conducts heat and browns and crisps the coating.

The step that matters

Fry the fish in boiling lard for 5 minutes. The lard must be hot enough to crisp the coating quickly. If it is too cool, the crumbs absorb fat and turn greasy before the fish cooks through.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Nutmegfits about as well
  4. Turmericfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against whiting, flour, egg, bread, anchovy. 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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