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To Crimp Cod

Crimp Cod is a method of curing cod in salt, water, and vinegar, then cooking and serving with garnish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and parsnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 484 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

To Crimp Cod

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut fresh cod into slices or steaks.

  2. Soak the cod in a mixture of salt and water with vinegar for 3 hours.

Cook and store

  1. Boil, fry, or broil the cod as desired.

  2. For winter storage, cut the fish into pieces, dry completely, and layer in a container with oatmeal or malt dust.

Serve

  1. To serve, garnish with hard-boiled eggs and parsley, and serve with boiled parsnips and egg 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.

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. Parsley + parsniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together484 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Parsley + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  4. Vinegar + parsleytop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,477 recipes

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

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Fresh cod
Main protein; the flesh firms and flakes as it cooks.
Vinegar
Acidity in the soaking liquid that firms the fish and helps preserve it.
Salt
Seasons the fish and, in the soak, firms its texture during curing.

The step that matters

Drying the cod before winter storage. Surface moisture encourages spoilage, so the pieces must be dried completely before they are layered with oatmeal or malt dust.

Swap the parsnip

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vinegar, egg, parsley, butter, sauce):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Mustardfits better
  4. Parsnipthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, egg, parsley, butter, sauce. 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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