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To Fry Smelts

Smelts are cleaned, coated in egg and breadcrumbs, then fried in lard and garnished with parsley and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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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 ↓

To Fry Smelts

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the smelts

  1. Wash the smelts and remove the gills.

  2. Dry them with a cloth.

  3. Beat the egg until well mixed.

  4. Rub the egg over the smelts using a feather.

  5. Strew bread crumbs over the smelts.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat hogs' lard in a pan until boiling hot.

  2. Fry the smelts in the hot fat until they are a fine brown.

  3. Remove the smelts and drain off the fat.

  4. Garnish with fried parsley and lemon.

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

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

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

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

  3. Bread + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,588 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  5. Bread + lemontop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,445 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Egg and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 44,316 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, cooked whole so the coating and frying form its crisp exterior.
Egg
Acts as a binder that helps the bread crumbs adhere to the smelts.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, browned coating that protects the fish during frying.
Hogs' lard
Frying fat that conducts heat evenly and browns the crumb coating.

The step that matters

Fry the smelts in the hot fat until they are a fine brown. The lard must be fully boiling hot before the fish goes in. Hot fat sets the crumb coating quickly, so the smelts crisp rather than soak up grease and turn soggy.

“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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