Why it works: Fish and pork work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 668 recipes. Both carry 4-heptenal, which smells creamy, biscuit. The science ↓
Fried Fresh Fish
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the fish
Wash the fish and drain it.
If large, cut it into squares; leave small fish whole.
Sprinkle the fish with coarse sea salt and dust with Indian meal.
Fry
Fry salt pork in a pan.
Place the fish in the hot fat and cook slowly for about 1 hour until a delicate brown.
Serve
Put bits of butter on a hot platter, lay the fish on top, and serve immediately.
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.
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Fish + porktop 12% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together668 recipes
Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).
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Fish + buttertop 12% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together4,488 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Pork + buttertop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together13,933 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Fresh fish
- Forms the main body of the dish, cooking to a flaky, tender texture.
- Indian meal
- Coats the fish so its surface browns and crisps in the hot fat.
- Salt pork
- Renders fat into the pan, providing the hot frying medium that browns the fish.
- Butter
- Adds richness and flavor to the fish as it is served on the hot platter.
The step that matters
Cook slowly in the hot fat. Slow cooking over steady heat cooks the fish through gently while the coating browns evenly, rather than scorching outside before the center is done.
“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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