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Frying Fish

Fried fish coated in flour, cooked in lard, then simmered in a claret and white wine sauce with anchovy, nutmeg, ginger, butter, lemon, and shallot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,154 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Frying Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Clean and dry the fish thoroughly.

  2. Sprinkle flour over the fish.

Fry

  1. Heat enough lard in a frying pan to cover the fish.

  2. Fry the fish until golden brown, then drain the fat.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. In the same pan, add claret, white wine, an anchovy, nutmeg, and ginger to cover the fish.

  2. Add the fried fish and simmer until half cooked.

  3. Remove the fish and add butter rolled in flour and minced lemon to the pan.

  4. Simmer until the sauce thickens.

  5. Rub a hot dish with shallot, place the fish in it, pour the sauce over, 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 their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Ginger + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Nutmeg + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. White wine + buttertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Coats the fish so it browns in the frying fat and helps thicken the sauce.
Butter
Rolled in flour and melted into the pan, it enriches and thickens the sauce.
Claret
Adds acidity and wine flavour to the sauce as it simmers around the fish.
Lemon
Adds acidity and bright flavour that cut through the rich fat and wine.
Dripping or hog's lard
Frying fat that cooks the floured fish to a golden, crisp-browned surface.

The step that matters

Fry the fish until golden brown, then drain the fat. Fish must be fried until the flour coating is golden and set, otherwise it will break apart or turn soft when it later simmers in the sauce.

Swap the ginger

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, flour, white wine, anchovy, nutmeg, butter, lemon):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, flour, white wine, anchovy, nutmeg, butter, lemon. 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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