Skip to main content
Main

To Fry Brook Trout or Other Small Fish

A simple fried fish dish using brook trout or similar small fish, seasoned with salt, pepper, cornmeal, and fried in butter and lard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Fish and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,488 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

To Fry Brook Trout or Other Small Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean and wash the fish, then wrap them in a clean, dry towel for a few minutes.

  2. Ensure the fish are perfectly dry inside and out.

  3. Season the fish with coarse sea salt and black pepper, then roll them in cornmeal.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat a mixture of butter and lard in a pan until boiling.

  2. Fry the fish in the hot fat until golden brown.

  3. Drain the fish on a sieve or coarse brown paper.

  4. Serve hot on a folded napkin.

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. Fish + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Fish + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,948 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Cornmeal
Forms a crisp, golden coating that protects the fish and browns in the hot fat.
Butter
Adds richness and flavor, and helps the coating brown during frying.
Lard
Provides a high-temperature frying fat that crisps the coating evenly.

The step that matters

Frying in hot fat. The fish must be completely dry and the fat hot before frying. Surface moisture turns to steam and makes the fat spatter, which keeps the coating from crisping and can make it soggy or 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.

You might also like

Fried FishFried Fish120 recipesFish CroquettesFish Croquettes81 recipesScalloped CodScalloped Cod69 recipesBroiled FishBroiled Fish68 recipes