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Boiled Cod

Boiled cod served with a Venetian sauce of butter, flour, water, pickles, capers, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Boiled Cod

Ingredients

Directions

Poach the cod

  1. Wipe the cod and boil it in Court Bouillon for 30 to 40 minutes.

  2. Remove the cod to a hot platter and garnish with parsley and lemon slices.

Make the Venetian Sauce

  1. For the Venetian Sauce, melt half the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add flour and gradually pour in boiling water while stirring constantly.

  3. Bring to a boil, then add the remaining butter, parsley, pickles, capers, and lemon juice.

  4. Season with salt to taste.

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 + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Parsley + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,550 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Lemon + caperstop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,222 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Flour + caperstop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,024 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Cod
Forms the main body of the dish, cooked gently in the court bouillon until flaky.
Butter
Enriches the sauce, adding richness and a smooth mouthfeel as it melts in.
Flour
Thickens the sauce by swelling with hot liquid to form a smooth, body-giving base.
Capers
Add a sharp, briny acidity that cuts through the richness of the butter sauce.
Lemon juice
Brightens the sauce with acidity that balances the butter and capers.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour and boiling water into the butter. Pouring the liquid in gradually while stirring constantly keeps the flour dispersed, so the sauce thickens smoothly instead of forming lumps.

“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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