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Smelts a LA Tan Volkenbnrgh

Pan-fried smelt fish seasoned with salt, pepper, flour, butter, and vinegar, garnished with parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Smelts a LA Tan Volkenbnrgh

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash and thoroughly dry the smelts.

  2. Split each smelt along the backbone and remove the backbone.

  3. Season with salt and pepper, then sprinkle with flour.

Fry and serve

  1. In a pan, heat butter on the hot range and fry the smelts for 2 minutes on each side until light brown.

  2. Dress the smelts on a hot dish.

  3. In the same pan, fry additional butter until nut-brown, add vinegar, and pour over the smelts.

  4. Garnish with parsley greens and serve.

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

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

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

  5. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Smelts
Form the main body of the dish, cooked whole-split and browned in butter.
Flour
Dusts the fish so its surface browns and crisps during frying.
Butter
Conducts heat for frying and, browned to nut-brown, adds nutty aroma and flavour.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that cuts the richness of the browned butter.

The step that matters

Frying the butter to nut-brown. Butter browns through milk solids toasting, which gives nutty flavour; if it burns, it turns bitter. Adding vinegar to hot butter makes it sizzle and deglazes the pan.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (smelt, pepper, flour, butter, vinegar):

  1. Parsleythe original
  2. Capersfits about as well
  3. Garlicfits less well
  4. Nutmegfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against smelt, pepper, flour, butter, vinegar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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