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Frying Fish

Fried fish coated in flour, cooked in lard, then finished in a wine, anchovy, butter, lemon sauce, served with fried bread crusts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 and fry

  1. Dust the cleaned and dried fish with flour.

  2. Heat enough hot lard or dripping in a pan to cover the fish.

  3. Fry the fish until golden brown, then drain on a cloth.

Make the sauce

  1. In the same pan, add claret or white wine, anchovy, salt, nutmeg, and ginger.

  2. Return the fish to the pan and simmer until the liquid is reduced by half.

  3. Add the butter rolled in flour and lemon juice, and simmer until thickened.

Serve

  1. Serve the fish on a hot dish, pour the sauce over it, and garnish with fried bread crusts.

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

Butter rolled in flour
Flour and butter thicken the reduced wine into a smooth, glossy sauce.
Claret or white wine
Forms the base of the sauce, adding acidity and flavour as it reduces.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, wine-based sauce.
Anchovy
Adds a savoury, salty depth to the sauce as it dissolves into the liquid.
Flour
Dusting the fish creates a crisp, golden browned coating when fried.

The step that matters

Frying the fish until golden brown. The flour dusting and hot fat must be ready before frying; fish added to fat that is not hot enough absorbs grease and cooks unevenly, so the coating stays pale and soggy.

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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