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Baked Codfish

A baked codfish dish with bread crumbs, cream, butter, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Baked Codfish

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the fish

  1. Wash the codfish thoroughly and soak it overnight in cold water.

  2. When ready to use, pick the fish into small pieces.

Assemble and bake

  1. In a baking dish, layer the fish with bread crumbs and pepper, adding mustard if desired.

  2. Top with a final layer of bread crumbs and spread softened butter over it.

  3. Pour cream over the entire dish and bake at 350°F (175°C) for 30 minutes.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Bread + mustardtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,484 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  5. Bread + peppertop 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

Codfish
Forms the main body of the dish and provides its savory flavor.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and form a crisp, golden topping as they bake.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the top crumbs brown.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness that keeps the fish tender as it bakes.

The step that matters

Soaking the codfish overnight. Dried salt cod is very salty, and soaking draws out salt so the fish seasons the dish gently. Insufficient soaking leaves the finished dish overly salty.

Swap the mustard

The recipe marks mustard as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, cream, butter, pepper):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, cream, butter, pepper. 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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