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Trenton Falls Fry

A fried fish dish where small fish are soaked in lemon juice, stuffed with breadcrumb mixture, coated in flour, and fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Trenton Falls Fry

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Soak small fish in lemon juice, salt, pepper, and chopped herbs.

  2. Remove fish, drain, and stuff with bread crumbs boiled in milk and beaten egg yolks.

  3. Sprinkle stuffed fish with flour.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry until golden brown.

  2. Serve on a bed of fried 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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  4. Fish + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Small fish
Forms the main body of the dish, cooked through by frying.
Lemon juice
Acidity that brightens the fish and helps flavor it during soaking.
Bread crumbs
Soak up milk and egg to form a moist, tender stuffing inside the fish.
Egg yolks
Bind the bread crumb stuffing and add richness and moisture.
Flour
Dries the outside of the fish so it browns crisply when fried.

The step that matters

Fry until golden brown. Flour-dusted fish can scorch before the thick stuffing heats through if the oil is too hot. Moderate heat lets the coating brown evenly while the fish cooks fully inside.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, lemon, pepper, bread, milk, egg, flour):

  1. Parsleythe original
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Marjoramfits about as well
  4. Tarragonfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, lemon, pepper, bread, milk, egg, flour. 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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