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Cod Pie

A savory pie made with cod, butter, stock, and a pastry crust, topped with a lemon‑flavored sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon 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 ↓

Cod Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cod

  1. Lay the cod in salt for 4 hours, then wash it and place it in a dish.

  2. Season the cod and add the butter and stock.

Bake

  1. Cover with the paste crust and bake for 1 hour or longer.

Make the sauce and finish

  1. Mix the stock, cream or milk, thickening, and lemon for sauce.

  2. Bring the sauce to a boil and pour it into the pie through a hole in the crust.

  3. Cover the hole with a small piece of pastry cut into a fanciful shape.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Nutmeg + macetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cod
Forms the flaky, tender filling that makes up the body of the pie.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavour through the fish and sauce.
Flour thickening
Starch thickens the sauce as it heats, giving it body rather than runniness.
Cream or milk
Adds creaminess and mild sweetness, smoothing the sauce and softening its edge.
Stock
Provides moisture and savoury depth to the fish and sauce.

The step that matters

Boiling the thickened sauce. Starch from the flour or butter thickening only swells fully once it reaches a boil. Stir while heating so the thickening disperses evenly and does not form lumps, then pour while hot so the sauce fills the pie smoothly.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, nutmeg, butter, sauce, cream, flour, lemon):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Cinnamonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, nutmeg, butter, sauce, cream, flour, lemon. 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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