Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and 122,858 recipes mention both. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓
The recipe
Ingredients
Contains: milk, wheat, fish (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)
Directions
The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.
Prepare
Strip the skin from the cod's head.
Dredge the head well with flour.
Place lumps of butter on top.
Bake and serve
Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for about 15 minutes, or until cooked through.
Alternatively, brown it using a salamander.
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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.
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Flour + buttertop 6% of all pairsAroma overlaplowMentioned together122,858 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour and butter share little aroma chemistry, yet 122,858 recipes mention both: they likely 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's head
- Forms the main body of the dish and cooks through in the oven.
- Flour
- Coats the surface so it can dry and brown during baking.
- Butter
- Adds fat that enriches flavour and helps the surface brown.
“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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