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Fried Fish

Fried fish coated in egg and bread crumbs, fried in lard or dripping, served with horseradish, parsley, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Fried Fish

Why it works: Parsley and lemon 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 ↓

Fried Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Clean and wash the fish thoroughly.

  2. Dry the fish completely.

  3. Beat the egg.

  4. Coat the fish with the beaten egg.

  5. Sprinkle bread crumbs over the fish until well covered.

Fry

  1. Heat a thick-bottomed frying pan with a large quantity of boiling hot lard or dripping.

  2. Plunge the fish into the hot fat and fry until it turns a fine brown yellow.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Horseradish + parsleytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together562 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Horseradish + lemontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,155 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Fish + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Egg
Binds the bread crumbs to the fish so the coating holds during frying.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, browned coating that protects the fish from direct heat.
Lard or dripping
Conducts heat and fries the coating to a crisp, golden browned crust.

The step that matters

Drying the fish completely. Surface moisture keeps the egg and crumbs from sticking and turns into steam in hot fat, which can loosen the coating and spatter. A dry surface lets the crumbs brown and crisp.

Swap the horseradish

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, egg, bread, parsley, lemon):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Horseradishthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, egg, bread, parsley, lemon. 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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