Skip to main content
Main

Fried Smelts

Fried smelts are fish fillets coated in eggs and cracker crumbs, then pan‑fried in lard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Smelt and egg work together. They rank in the top 38% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 174 recipes. The science ↓

Fried Smelts

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the smelts

  1. Clean the smelts by splitting them just enough to remove the insides.

  2. Soak the smelts in salt and water for 1 hour.

  3. Wash and dry the smelts.

Bread and fry

  1. Beat the eggs in a plate and place the cracker crumbs in another plate.

  2. Heat the lard in a frying pan until very hot.

  3. Dip the smelts in the eggs, then roll them in the cracker crumbs.

  4. Fry the smelts in the hot lard until they are light brown.

  5. Serve hot with drawn butter.

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. Smelt + eggtop 38% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together174 recipes

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

What each ingredient does

Smelts
The main fish; cleaned and fried whole so the flesh cooks through and the skin crisps.
Eggs
Act as a binder so the cracker crumbs adhere to the fish during frying.
Cracker crumbs
Form a crisp, golden coating that browns and protects the fish in the hot fat.
Lard
Frying fat that conducts heat quickly, browning the coating and crisping the outside.

The step that matters

Fry in very hot lard. If the lard is not very hot, the coating absorbs fat and turns greasy before it sets and browns. Very hot fat seals the crumb crust quickly, so the fish stays moist inside and the coating stays crisp.

“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

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes