Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓
To Fry Smelts
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Clean the smelts without washing them too much and dry them with a cloth.
Lightly flour the smelts.
Dip the floured smelts in beaten eggs, then coat them with fine bread crumbs.
Fry and serve
Heat lard in a pan until boiling and fry the smelts until they are a pale brown. Be careful not to remove the light roughness of the crumbs.
Drain the fried smelts on a rack and serve with plain melted butter.
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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Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together27,232 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together22,662 recipes
Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).
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Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together106,462 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together118,967 recipes
Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
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
- Flour
- Dry coating that helps the egg wash adhere to the fish.
- Eggs
- Binding liquid that holds the bread crumb coating to the smelts.
- Fine bread crumbs
- Forms a crisp, golden crust when fried.
- Lard
- Hot frying fat that conducts heat and browns the crumb coating.
The step that matters
Frying the coated smelts. Lard must be boiling hot before the smelts go in, so the crumb coating crisps quickly and the fish cooks through before it absorbs grease or the crust falls off. Disturbing the crumbs early can strip the coating.
“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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