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Smelts a LA Langtry

Smelts à la Langtry is a baked fish dish featuring smelts, butter, white wine, and lobster coral.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Smelts a LA Langtry

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the smelts

  1. Split and bone the smelts, cutting off the tails.

  2. Turn the meat over one inch onto the flesh side.

  3. Sprinkle with salt and pepper, and brush with lemon juice.

  4. Garnish with fish forcemeat from a pastry bag, and fasten heads with skewers.

Bake and serve

  1. Arrange in a buttered pan and pour around the white wine.

  2. Cover with buttered paper and bake at 400°F (200°C) for 15-20 minutes.

  3. Just before removing from the oven, sprinkle with lobster coral forced through a strainer.

  4. Serve with Aurora Sauce.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Butter + white winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Smelt + lobstertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together35 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Lemon + white winetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  5. Fish + meattop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together479 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

Smelts
The main fish; its delicate flesh cooks quickly and turns flaky in the oven.
Fish forcemeat
Piped garnish that sets in the oven, adding a soft, moist layer to the fish.
White wine
Poured around the fish, it steams the fillets and adds acidity and aroma.
Butter
Greases the pan and paper, adding richness and helping prevent sticking.
Lemon juice
Brushed on the fish, it adds acidity that brightens the flavour.
Lobster coral
Sprinkled on at the end, it adds colour and a mild shellfish aroma.

The step that matters

Covered baking time. Smelts are thin and cook in minutes. Overbaking dries the flesh and toughens it, so checking early within the stated time protects the texture.

“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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