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Brandade of Cod Fish

A creamy cod dish topped with lemon, buttered bread, and prawns or shrimps.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Brandade of Cod Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Flake the boned meat from the salt cod.

  2. In a saucepan over low heat, combine the flaked cod and cream.

Make the emulsion

  1. Stir continuously with a spoon while slowly adding oil drop by drop.

  2. Continue stirring until the mixture thickens to a creamy consistency.

Serve

  1. Transfer the mixture to a serving dish, shaping it into a pyramid.

  2. Decorate with sliced lemon, buttered bread slices, and prawns or shrimps.

  3. Add a crushed clove of garlic for extra flavor, if desired.

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. Lemon + garlictop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,893 recipes

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

  4. Clove + garlictop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,368 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  5. Lemon + clovetop 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

Boned salt cod
Forms the body of the dish, providing its main flavor and substance.
Cream
Adds fat and moisture, keeping the mixture smooth and soft.
Oil
Emulsifies into the cod and cream, building a thick, creamy texture.

The step that matters

Adding the oil slowly while stirring. Oil must be added drop by drop and stirred constantly so it disperses into the cod and cream. Adding it too fast can break the emulsion, leaving the mixture oily and separated instead of thick and creamy.

Swap the clove

The recipe marks clove as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, cream, lemon, bread, butter, shrimp, garlic):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, cream, lemon, bread, butter, shrimp, garlic. 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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