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To Fry Smelts

Fried smelts coated in flour, beaten egg, and bread crumbs, cooked in lard or oil until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 22,662 recipes. Both carry (e)-2-octenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

To Fry Smelts

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean the smelts without washing them too much.

  2. Dry them with a cloth and lightly flour them, shaking off excess flour.

  3. Dip the smelts in plenty of beaten egg, then coat them with fine bread crumbs.

Fry

  1. Heat a pan with boiling lard or oil and carefully add the smelts.

  2. Fry until they are a bright yellow-brown, about a few minutes.

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

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

  2. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Smelt + flourtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together164 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Smelt + breadtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together150 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Flour + breadtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,383 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Smelts
The main fish, whose delicate flesh cooks quickly in hot fat.
Eggs
Bind the flour and bread crumbs so the coating stays attached during frying.
Flour
Dry light coating that helps the egg wash cling to the fish.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden-brown crust when fried.

The step that matters

Adding the smelts to the hot fat. If the lard or oil is not hot enough, the coating absorbs fat and turns greasy instead of crisping. Carefully lowering the fish into boiling fat helps the crust set quickly and keeps it from breaking apart.

“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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