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Fried Whitefish

Fried whitefish seasoned with salt and pepper, coated in cornmeal or flour, and fried in lard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Whitefish and flour work together. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 55 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Fried Whitefish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean the whitefish without splitting.

  2. Season with coarse sea salt and black pepper.

  3. Roll the fish in cornmeal or flour.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry in cleared dripping or sweet lard until golden.

  2. Drain off the fat and serve on a hot dish.

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. Whitefish + flourtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together55 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Whitefish + peppertop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together97 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Whitefish
Provides the main body of the dish, cooking through to flaky, tender flesh.
Cornmeal or flour
Forms a coating that crisps and browns in the hot fat, protecting the fish.
Cleared dripping or sweet lard
Conducts heat for frying and adds richness and browning to the coating.

The step that matters

Fry in cleared dripping or sweet lard until golden. The fat must be hot enough to crisp the coating quickly. If it is too cool, the coating absorbs fat and turns greasy before it browns, and the fish can steam inside it.

“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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