Skip to main content
Main

To Fry Plaice in Egg and Bread-crumbs or Batter

Fried plaice fillets coated in beaten egg and bread crumbs, pan‑fried in clarified fat.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Egg and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 22,662 recipes. Both carry (e)-2-octenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

To Fry Plaice in Egg and Bread-crumbs or Batter

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Wash the plaice in cold water.

  2. Dry the plaice with a cloth.

  3. Place the plaice on a cutting board.

  4. Remove the skin from the back.

  5. Cut off the head and tail.

  6. Cut the fish into slices or fillets.

Coat the fish

  1. Grate bread crumbs onto a piece of paper.

  2. Break the egg into a plate.

  3. Beat the egg lightly.

  4. Dip the fish slices into the egg, coating them well.

  5. Roll the egg‑coated fish in the bread crumbs, ensuring they are fully covered.

Fry and drain

  1. Heat the dripping in a saucepan over medium heat.

  2. When the dripping is hot and smoking, carefully add the fish.

  3. Avoid touching the fish too much.

  4. Fry the fish in batches, ensuring they do not touch each other.

  5. Once fried, place the fish on a piece of paper to drain excess grease.

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. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Plaice
The main fish, which becomes flaky and tender when fried in the coating.
Egg
Binds the bread crumbs to the fish so the coating stays on during frying.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden coating that browns in the hot fat.
Dripping
Clarified fat that carries heat evenly and fries the coating to a crisp, browned finish.

The step that matters

Frying in batches without crowding. Crowded fish drops the fat temperature and releases moisture, so the coating steams and turns soggy instead of crisp and golden.

“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

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipesOatmeal BreadOatmeal Bread51 recipes