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Frying Fish

Fried fish served with a sauce of claret, white wine, anchovy, nutmeg, ginger, salt, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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. Coat the fish in flour.

Fry and make the sauce

  1. Heat plenty of dripping or hog's lard in a frying pan until boiling.

  2. Fry the fish until golden brown, then drain on a dish or sieve.

  3. In the same pan, add claret and white wine to nearly cover the fish, along with an anchovy, salt, nutmeg, and ginger.

  4. Add the fried fish and simmer until the liquid is reduced by half.

  5. Remove the fish and stir in butter rolled in flour and minced lemon, simmer until thickened.

Serve

  1. Rub a hot dish with shallot.

  2. Place the fish in the dish.

  3. Pour the sauce over the fish.

  4. 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 crisply when fried and helps thicken the sauce.
Butter
Rolled in flour, it thickens the sauce and adds richness and body.
Claret
Forms the main liquid of the sauce, adding flavour and colour as it reduces.
Anchovy
Adds a savoury depth to the sauce that enriches the wine flavour.
Lemon
Adds acidity that brightens the rich sauce.

The step that matters

Reducing the sauce until thickened. The liquid must reduce by half before the flour-thickened butter is added. Simmering concentrates flavour and evaporates water, and the flour starch then thickens the sauce. Stirring the butter and flour in gently helps prevent lumps.

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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