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To Fry Whitings

A fried fish dish where whitings are coated in egg, breadcrumbs, and flour, then fried in lard and served with butter and sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

To Fry Whitings

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Clean, skin, and dry the whitings thoroughly with a cloth.

  2. Fasten their tails to their mouths.

Coat and fry

  1. Brush the fish evenly with the beaten eggs mixed with salt.

  2. Cover the fish with a mixture of bread crumbs and flour.

  3. Fry in plenty of boiling lard until golden brown, about 5 to 8 minutes.

  4. Drain and dry the fish well.

Serve

  1. Serve on a hot napkin with melted butter and sauce 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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Butter + shrimptop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,931 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, 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

What each ingredient does

Whitings
The main fish; its flesh cooks through quickly in hot fat while the coating crisps.
Eggs
Bind the bread crumb and flour coating to the fish so it stays on during frying.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden outer crust when fried in hot lard.
All-purpose flour
Dries the surface and helps the crumbs adhere, aiding an even golden crust.

The step that matters

Drying the fish before coating and frying. Moisture on the fish surface turns to steam in hot lard and loosens the coating, so the fish should be dried thoroughly before coating and again after frying to keep the crust crisp.

“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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