Skip to main content
Main

Whiting or Haddock in Meal

Fish coated in milk and meal, fried and steamed, served with lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Whiting or Haddock in Meal

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash, scrape, and dry the fish thoroughly, then remove the heads.

  2. Brush the fish inside and out with milk, then coat well with meal.

Fry and steam

  1. In a large pan, melt the butter over medium heat.

  2. Fry the fish on both sides until nicely browned, sprinkling with lemon juice while cooking.

  3. Cover the pan with a lid and move it to a cooler part of the stove to steam gently for 10 to 15 minutes.

  4. If desired, drain the fish on paper towels before serving.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  4. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Whiting + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together510 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Whiting or haddock
Forms the main body of the dish, its flaky flesh cooking through gently under the coating.
Milk
Acts as a binder so the meal coating adheres evenly to the fish.
Meal
Forms a crisp, golden coating that browns in the hot butter.
Butter
Conducts heat for frying and adds fat that browns the coating and enriches flavour.

The step that matters

Steam gently after frying. Moving the pan to a cooler part of the stove and covering it lets the fish cook through without burning the coating. High direct heat would brown the outside before the centre is done.

“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.

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes