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Broiled Salt Codfish

Broiled salt codfish served with baked potatoes and bread, finished with cream, butter, and white pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and wheat match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 235 recipes. Both carry (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, melon. The science ↓

Broiled Salt Codfish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cod

  1. Soak the salt cod in water for 24 hours.

  2. Remove the bones and break the fish into good-sized flakes.

Cook

  1. Heat a frying pan and add a little butter.

  2. Broil the fish on both sides until browned.

  3. Add the cream, butter, and white pepper.

  4. Let it stew gently for a few moments.

Serve

  1. Serve with baked potatoes and your choice of bread.

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. Potato + wheattop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together235 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Butter + potatotop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

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

  4. Butter + wheattop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,002 recipes

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

  5. Cream + potatotop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

Salt cod
Provides the main body and salty, savoury flavour of the dish.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, softening the salty fish into a creamy sauce.
Butter
Adds fat for frying and browning, and richness to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Soaking the salt cod. Salt cod must be soaked long enough to draw out excess salt; under-soaking leaves the fish too salty, while the flesh needs hydration to flake cleanly.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, cream, potato, wheat):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, cream, potato, wheat. 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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