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Sauted Fish Steaks

Sautéed fish steaks are fish slices coated in flour or breadcrumbs, fried until crisp, and served with butter, parsley, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Sauted Fish Steaks

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove bones from the fish if desired and skewer the fish into a circle, fastening with toothpicks or small skewers.

  2. Season the fish with coarse sea salt.

  3. Dip the fish in flour, or a mixture of flour and cornmeal, or in breadcrumbs, followed by the beaten egg and then breadcrumbs again.

Cook

  1. Heat the frying pan and add the fat until very hot.

  2. Add the fish to the hot fat and cook until a crust forms on both sides.

  3. Reduce the heat and cook slowly, turning the fish 3 to 4 times.

  4. Cook for 10 to 12 minutes for 1-inch thick steaks.

Serve

  1. Serve with drawn butter or another fish sauce, garnished with parsley and 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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Fish + beeftop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together226 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

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

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Fish
Forms the main body of the dish, cooked through while the coating stays crisp outside.
Flour
Dry coating that helps the crust form and brown in the hot fat.
Egg
Binds the flour or breadcrumb coating so it adheres to the fish.
Fat
Conducts heat to brown the coating and adds rich flavour to the crust.

The step that matters

Heat the fat until very hot before adding the fish. Hot fat sears the coating quickly, forming a crust that seals in moisture and prevents sticking. Fat that is too cool lets the coating absorb oil and turn greasy and soggy.

“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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