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 ↓
Fried Plaice
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Prepare the plaice and cut it into fillets.
Wipe the fillets very dry.
Brush the fillets with egg.
Roll the fillets in bread crumbs.
Fry and serve
Fry in boiling fat for 5 minutes, or 1 minute longer if the fish is thick.
Drain on paper and serve hot.
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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Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked 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
- Forms the main body of the dish; its flaky white flesh cooks through in a short time.
- Egg
- Acts as a binder so the bread crumbs adhere evenly to the fillets.
- Bread crumbs
- Form a crisp, golden coating that browns in the hot fat and seals in moisture.
The step that matters
Wipe the fillets very dry. Surface moisture turns to steam in the hot fat, which loosens the crumb coating and makes the fried crust soggy instead of crisp.
“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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