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Baked Codfish

A baked codfish dish with bread crumbs, cream, butter, pepper, and optional mustard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Baked Codfish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Wash the fish thoroughly and soak it overnight in cold water.

  2. When ready to use, pick the fish into small pieces.

Assemble and bake

  1. In a baking dish, layer the fish with bread crumbs and pepper, adding mustard if desired.

  2. Spread softened butter over the top layer of crumbs.

  3. Pour cream over the entire dish and bake for 30 minutes.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Bread + mustardtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,484 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  5. Bread + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Codfish
Forms the main body of the dish, providing its flaky, savory base.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and form a crisp, golden layer on top as they bake.
Cream
Adds richness and moisture, helping the layers stay tender as they bake.
Butter
Adds fat that helps the top crumbs brown and crisp in the oven.

The step that matters

Soak the fish thoroughly before use. Salted or dried cod must be soaked to remove excess salt and rehydrate the flesh; skipping or shortening the soak leaves the dish overly salty and tough.

Swap the mustard

The recipe marks mustard as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, cream, butter, pepper):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, cream, butter, pepper. 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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