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Dressed Fish

Battered fish fillets fried and served with tomato sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Tarragon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,563 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Dressed Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Mix flour, milk, and a pinch of salt until smooth to make the batter.

  2. Add egg yolks and salad oil, then fold in the whipped egg white.

  3. Set the batter aside to rest.

Marinate the fish

  1. In a bowl, mix salad oil, tarragon vinegar, chili vinegar, chopped parsley, chopped onion, pepper, and salt.

  2. Fillet the sole, cut each fillet in half, and soak in the oil and vinegar mixture for 10 minutes.

Fry and serve

  1. Dip each piece of fish in the batter and fry in boiling fat until golden.

  2. Garnish with fried parsley and serve with tomato sauce.

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. Tarragon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Tarragon + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Tarragon + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,547 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Forms the batter's structure once mixed with milk and eggs.
Egg white
Whipped and folded in to lighten the batter and help it puff when fried.
Egg yolks
Enrich the batter, adding richness and helping it bind and brown.
Milk or cream
Adds moisture to the batter so it mixes smooth and coats the fish.
Salad oil
Adds fat to the batter and carries flavour in the vinegar marinade.
Tarragon vinegar
Adds acidity and sharp flavour to the fish marinade.

The step that matters

Folding in the whipped egg white. Folding gently keeps the air in the whipped egg white. Deflating it makes the batter dense and less light when fried.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, flour, egg, tarragon, vinegar, parsley, pepper):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, flour, egg, tarragon, vinegar, parsley, pepper. 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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