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Boiled Codfish and Oyster Sattce

A boiled codfish served with a sauce made from oysters, butter, milk, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper 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 ↓

Boiled Codfish and Oyster Sattce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Soak the fish in cold, salted water for 30 minutes before cooking.

  2. Roll the fish in a clean cloth dredged with flour and sew the edges to completely enclose it.

Cook the fish

  1. Place the fish in boiling salted water with whole cloves, peppercorns, and lemon peel.

  2. Check doneness by gently pulling on the fins; they should come out easily.

Make the oyster sauce and serve

  1. For the oyster sauce, scald the oysters in hot oyster liquor.

  2. Remove the oysters and add salt, pepper, mace, and butter to the liquor.

  3. Whisk in milk mixed with flour and simmer briefly.

  4. Add the oysters back to the sauce and serve in a sauce boat.

  5. Arrange the cooked fish on a folded napkin and garnish.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Oyster + fishtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together496 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  5. Clove + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Codfish
Provides the main body of the dish, cooked gently in salted water to stay moist and flaky.
Oysters
Add briny, savoury flavour to the sauce and a tender texture once scalded.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth, lightly bound sauce.
Milk
Gives the sauce creaminess and body as it simmers.

The step that matters

Whisking the milk and flour into the sauce. Flour added to hot liquid clumps unless it is first mixed smooth and whisked in steadily. Simmering briefly then cooks out the raw flour taste and thickens the sauce evenly.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, clove, lemon, oyster, fish, pepper, butter):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, clove, lemon, oyster, fish, pepper, butter. 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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