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Smelts a LA Memere

Smelts à la Memère is a dish of smelts fried in butter, finished with anchovy essence, lemon juice, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley 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 ↓

Smelts a LA Memere

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean the smelts and make several gashes on each side.

  2. Season the smelts with salt, pepper, and lemon juice.

  3. Let the smelts stand for 10 minutes.

  4. Roll the smelts in cream.

  5. Dip the smelts in flour.

Fry and make the sauce

  1. Fry the smelts in butter until golden.

  2. Add 2 tablespoons of flour and 1 cup of stock to the pan. Stir the mixture well.

  3. Add 1 ⅓ teaspoons of anchovy essence and lemon juice.

  4. Cook the sauce until thick.

  5. Stir in 1 ½ tablespoons of butter and 1 teaspoon of parsley.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

  4. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Smelt + anchovytop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28 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

Flour
Thickens the pan sauce and helps the smelts brown and crisp when dipped and fried.
Butter
Fries the smelts to golden and enriches the finished sauce with fat and flavour.
Cream
Coats the smelts so the surface stays moist and helps the flour adhere.
Stock
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, which thickens as it cooks.
Anchovy essence
Adds a salty, savoury depth to the sauce.

The step that matters

Frying the smelts in butter until golden. Smelts are small and thin, so they cook quickly; too much heat browns the flour coating before the fish is cooked through, while too little heat leaves them pale and greasy.

“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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