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Smelts , Fried

Fried smelts coated in flour, egg, and breadcrumbs, served with parsley, lemon, and cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Smelts , Fried

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the gills from the smelts, then wash and dry them.

Coat and fry

  1. Coat the smelts in flour, dip them in beaten egg, and then cover with bread crumbs.

  2. Arrange the smelts in a frying basket and fry in boiling lard for about 3 minutes until light brown.

Serve

  1. Serve on a napkin with fried parsley, lemon quarters, and cayenne pepper for individual seasoning.

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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Smelts
Are the main fish that gets coated and fried until crisp and light brown.
Flour
Dry coating that helps the beaten egg adhere to the smelts.
1 egg
Binds the flour to the bread crumbs so the crumb coating stays on during frying.
Very finely grated bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden outer crust when fried in hot lard.

The step that matters

Frying in boiling lard. The lard must be hot enough to crisp the crumb coating quickly; if it is too cool, the coating absorbs more fat and turns greasy before the fish cooks through.

“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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