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Fried Plaice or Soles

Fried Plaice or Sole is a fish fillet coated in flour, egg, and breadcrumbs, then fried in clarified fat.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 22,662 recipes. Both carry (e)-2-octenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Fried Plaice or Soles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Dry the fillet with flour.

  2. Whip the egg on a plate with a knife.

  3. Brush the fillet with the egg.

  4. Place bread crumbs on a large sheet of kitchen paper.

  5. Lay the fillet in the bread crumbs.

  6. Toss the fillet to coat.

  7. Press the crumbs firmly onto the fillet with a broad knife.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat the fat until boiling; it should still have faint blue fumes.

  2. Fry the fillet until golden brown.

  3. Remove the fillet with a fish slice.

  4. Drain the fillet on paper and pile it on a dish.

  5. Serve with fried parsley.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Bread + flourtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,383 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Plaice or sole fillet
Forms the main body of the dish, cooking to a delicate, flaky texture under the coating.
Egg
Acts as a binder so the bread crumbs adhere to the fish before frying.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden, browned coating when fried in fat.
Flour
Dries the fillet's surface so the egg and crumbs stick evenly.

The step that matters

Heating the fat. Fat that is not hot enough lets the coating soak up oil and turn greasy, while overheated fat browns the crumbs before the fish cooks through. Hot, steady fat seals the coating quickly for a crisp result.

“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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