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A LA Russe

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and 43,327 recipes mention both. Both carry (e,e)-2,4-decadienal, which smells fatty, deep fried. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: egg, milk, fish (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Also mentioned in the method: fish

Directions

  1. Mix the fish, egg yolk, and lemon juice in a pan.

  2. Stir over medium heat for a few minutes.

  3. Form the mixture into finger shapes.

  4. Dip each finger in batter.

  5. Fry in hot fat until golden brown.

  6. Sprinkle grated cheese over the fried fingers and serve.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Egg + lemontop 9% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together43,327 recipes

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

  2. Egg + cheesetop 17% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together5,948 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + cheesetop 19% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together1,152 recipes

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

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

Flavor stand-ins for the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, cheese):

  1. Figbetter flavor fit
  2. Applebetter flavor fit
  3. Pearbetter flavor fit
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, cheese. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

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