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Fried Fish

Fried fish coated in cornmeal and breadcrumbs, then deep‑fried until golden, served hot with lemon or tomato sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Fried Fish

Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Fried Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Scale, clean, wash, and dry the fish.

  2. Sprinkle the fish inside and out with salt and pepper.

  3. Roll the fish in cornmeal, or dip it in the beaten egg and then coat with bread crumbs.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat oil in a deep pan until hot enough to brown a piece of bread in 1 minute.

  2. Fry the fish until golden brown, then drain on paper towels.

  3. Serve very hot with lemon slices or tomato sauce.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

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

  4. Fish + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,889 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

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

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 and cooks through in the hot oil.
Cornmeal
Forms a crisp, golden coating that browns when fried.
Bread crumbs
Adds a crunchy, browned outer layer when the egg-dipped fish is fried.
Egg
Helps bread crumbs stick to the fish so the coating stays on during frying.

The step that matters

Heating the oil. The oil must be hot enough to brown bread in about a minute. If it is too cool, the coating absorbs oil and turns greasy 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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