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Smelts and Gudgeons

Smelts or gudgeons are cleaned, coated in egg and breadcrumbs, then fried until crisp, served with butter or ketchup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Smelts and Gudgeons

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean the smelts or gudgeons and dry them thoroughly by wrapping in a coarse cloth for at least one hour.

Coat and fry

  1. Dip the fish in beaten egg, then coat with bread crumbs.

  2. Heat clean lard or dripping in a pan until boiling.

  3. Fry the fish until crisp and golden brown.

Serve

  1. Serve with cold butter, or melted butter and ketchup if desired.

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. Smelt + ketchuptop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Bread + ketchuptop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together813 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Smelts or gudgeons
The main fish; its small size means it cooks quickly and fries whole.
Egg
Binds the bread crumbs to the fish so the coating stays on during frying.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden coating that browns in the hot fat.
Clean lard or dripping
Frying fat that conducts heat evenly and gives the coating its crisp, browned surface.

The step that matters

Drying the fish before coating. Surface water turns to steam in hot fat and pushes the crumbs off, so the fish should be thoroughly dry before the egg and crumbs go on.

“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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