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Stewed Codfish

A stew of cod slices flavored with nutmeg, mace, cayenne, celery or sweet herbs, oyster liquor, lemon, butter, and oysters.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Stewed Codfish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Place cod slices in a stewpan.

  2. Season with nutmeg, mace, cayenne pepper, and chopped celery or sweet herbs.

  3. Add oyster liquor and lemon juice.

Stew

  1. Cover and let it stew gently until the fish is almost done, shaking the pan frequently.

  2. Roll butter in flour.

  3. Add the butter mixture to the stew along with oysters and their liquor.

  4. Cover again.

  5. Increase the heat slightly.

  6. Let it stew for 5 more minutes.

  7. Remove the bunch of sweet herbs before serving.

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. Celery + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cod
Forms the main body of the stew, becoming flaky as it cooks gently in liquid.
Fresh butter
Adds richness and body, and the flour coating helps thicken the cooking liquid.
Oysters
Contribute briny flavor and tender texture, cooking quickly at the end.
Oyster liquor
Provides the salty, savory liquid base that carries the stew's flavor.

The step that matters

Adding the oysters at the end. Oysters toughen and shrink when overcooked. Adding them with the butter mixture and stewing only briefly keeps them tender while the fish finishes cooking.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against nutmeg, pepper, celery, oyster, lemon, butter, flour. 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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