Why it works: Flour and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 50,459 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓
Whitebait
Ingredients
Directions
Place the whitebait in a bowl with a piece of ice to keep it cold.
Spread the fish on a cloth to drain.
Sprinkle a clean cloth with flour, add a small amount of whitebait, and sprinkle more flour on top.
Fold the cloth and shake it well to coat the fish in flour.
Transfer the fish to a wire drying basket and shake to remove excess flour.
Heat clean, very hot lard in a pan and plunge the basket into it.
Fry the whitebait rapidly for 3 to 4 minutes, moving the basket continuously.
Remove the basket, shake off excess fat, and place the fish on a cloth or paper.
Repeat until all the whitebait are fried.
Season with cayenne or black pepper and coarse sea salt.
Serve on a folded napkin or lace paper with lemon wedges and thin slices of brown bread and butter.
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.
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Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together50,459 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
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