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Frying Fish

Fried fish coated in flour, cooked in lard, finished with a wine sauce, butter, lemon, and shallot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Turbot and anchovy match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 110 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Frying Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Clean and thoroughly dry the fish.

  2. Coat the fish in flour.

Fry and simmer

  1. Heat enough hot lard in a frying pan to cover the fish.

  2. Fry the fish until it is nicely browned.

  3. Carefully remove the fish from the pan and drain the fat.

  4. In the same pan, add claret or white wine to nearly cover the fish, along with the anchovy, salt, nutmeg, and ginger.

  5. Return the fish to the pan.

  6. Let it simmer in the liquid until it is half cooked.

  7. Remove the fish from the pan.

  8. Add a piece of butter rolled in flour and minced lemon to the pan.

  9. Let the sauce simmer until it thickens.

Serve

  1. Rub a hot dish with shallot.

  2. Place the fish in the dish.

  3. Pour the sauce over the fish.

  4. Serve.

  5. You can also serve melted butter 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. Turbot + anchovytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together110 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  2. Nutmeg + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. White wine + buttertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Fish + anchovytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together637 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Coats the fish so it browns in the fat and helps thicken the sauce.
Hot lard
Fries the fish, browning its surface and giving it a rich flavour.
Claret or white wine
Forms the simmering liquid that cooks the fish and makes the sauce acidic and aromatic.
Butter
Adds richness and body to the sauce as it melts into it.
Lemon
Adds acidity and fresh flavour to the sauce.

The step that matters

Simmering the fish until half cooked. Simmering gently in the wine keeps the flesh moist and tender. Boiling hard would toughen and break the delicate fish, so the heat must stay low.

Swap the ginger

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, turbot, flour, white wine, anchovy, nutmeg, butter):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, turbot, flour, white wine, anchovy, nutmeg, butter. 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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