Skip to main content
Main

Baked Cod

Baked cod stuffed with bread crumb mixture, baked with salt pork and served with a butter, flour, ketchup sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Baked Cod

Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Baked Cod

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

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Make a dressing by mixing bread crumbs, pepper, salt, parsley, onion, and chopped salt pork with the egg.

  3. Fill the body of the cod with the dressing and sew it up.

Bake and serve

  1. Place the fish in a large pan and lay strips of salt pork on top.

  2. Add water and a little salt to the pan.

  3. Bake for 1.5 hours, basting often with a mixture of butter and flour.

  4. Once cooked, transfer the fish to a serving dish.

  5. In the pan, mix in a little flour, butter, and ketchup; bring to a boil and pour over the fish.

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 + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

  3. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Onion + porktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,214 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cod
Forms the main body of the dish, cooked gently by baking until flaky.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture from the egg and onion to form a stuffing that holds its shape.
Egg
Binds the bread crumb dressing together so it stays inside the fish during baking.
Salt pork
Releases fat as it cooks, moistening the fish and adding savory flavor.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the basting mixture and the sauce, promoting browning.
Flour
Thickens the butter and pan liquids into a smooth, slightly thick sauce.

The step that matters

Basting the fish during baking. Regular basting keeps the surface moist and the fat distributed over a long bake, helping prevent the lean fish from drying out.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, pepper, parsley, pork, egg, butter, flour):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, pepper, parsley, pork, egg, butter, flour. 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.

More baked cod recipes

Head 15with Breadcrumbs 5with Mashed Potatoes 3with Oyster Sauce 3 See all 56 →

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesCream of Tomato SoupCream of Tomato Soup107 recipesPork CakePork Cake107 recipes