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Pan Fish

Pan Fish is a whole fish fried in lard or oil, garnished with lemon slices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Fish and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,889 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Pan Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Fry the first side

  1. Arrange the fish in a thick-bottomed frying pan with heads facing the same direction.

  2. Fill the gaps with smaller fish.

  3. Fry until the fish are golden brown.

  4. Cover the pan with a dinner plate.

  5. Drain off the fat.

  6. Invert the pan to place the fish on the plate.

Fry the second side

  1. Return the lard to the pan.

  2. Heat the lard.

  3. Slip the fish back in.

  4. Fry the other side until brown.

  5. Drain the fish.

Serve

  1. Turn the fish onto a plate.

  2. Transfer the fish to a warm platter.

  3. Garnish with lemon slices.

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. Fish + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,889 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Whole fish
Forms the main dish; its skin and flesh brown and firm up during frying.
Lard or cooking oil
Conducts heat evenly and browns the fish surface while adding richness.

The step that matters

Turning the fish with the plate. Inverting the pan onto a plate and sliding the fish back in must be done carefully, because whole fish skin can tear or stick. Draining the fat first keeps the pan from spattering when the fish is returned.

“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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