Name: To Fry Smelts
Ingredients: fresh smelts; flour; 1 egg yolk, beaten; finely grated bread crumbs; boiling lard or dripping; fried parsley for garnish; melted butter for sauce

Why it works: Smelt and sauce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 103 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

To Fry Smelts

Ingredients

Directions

Wipe the fresh smelts with a clean cloth; do not wash them.
Dredge the smelts in flour or brush them with a feather.
Dip the smelts in the beaten egg yolk, then roll them in the bread crumbs.
Fry the smelts in boiling lard or dripping until they are a clear yellow brown.
Carefully remove the smelts and place them on the back of a sieve to drain and keep hot.
Arrange the smelts on a plate, alternating heads and tails.
Garnish with fried parsley and serve with melted butter.

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.

Smelt + saucetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together103 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together16,675 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (smelt, flour, egg, bread, butter, sauce):

Capersfits better
Nutmegfits about as well
Parsleythe original
Garlicfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against smelt, flour, egg, bread, butter, sauce. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.