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To Fry Smelts

Smelts are cleaned, coated in egg yolk and breadcrumbs, then fried until golden and served crisp with melted butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

To Fry Smelts

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove gills from the smelts without opening them.

  2. Wash and dry the smelts thoroughly with a cloth.

Fry and serve

  1. Dip the smelts in the beaten egg yolk, then coat with bread crumbs mixed with flour.

  2. Fry the smelts in hot oil until they are a clear golden brown.

  3. Serve the smelts very crisp and dry with melted 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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolk
Binds the bread crumb and flour coating to the smelts so it stays on during frying.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden coating that browns in the hot oil.
Flour
Helps the crumb coating adhere and contributes to browning.
Butter
Adds richness and flavor to the finished fried smelts.

The step that matters

Drying the smelts before coating. Surface water turns to steam in hot oil and pushes the coating off, while also making the fish soggy. Drying thoroughly helps the coating stick and the crust turn 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.

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