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Crimped Cod Masked with Oyster Sauce

Cod fillet simmered in a creamy oyster sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Crimped Cod Masked with Oyster Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Poach the fish

  1. Tie the codfish in a cloth and place it in boiling water with salt and vinegar.

Make the oyster sauce

  1. Scald the oysters in their own liquor until firm, but do not boil.

  2. Strain the oysters and remove the beards, then return them to the liquor.

  3. In a saucepan, melt the butter and stir in the flour until bubbling, without burning.

  4. Add the oysters and half a pint of the liquor to the butter and flour, stirring until smooth and just boiling.

  5. Stir in the cream and bring to a boil again, seasoning with white pepper and a little salt if needed.

Serve

  1. Pour the thick sauce over the fish and garnish with parsley and lemon.

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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Oyster + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,184 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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, cooked gently in boiling salted, vinegared water.
Oysters
Provide the briny, savoury flavour that defines the sauce.
Butter
Enriches the sauce and forms the base for the flour roux.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when cooked with butter and liquid.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety texture to the sauce.

The step that matters

Add the cream and reheat without over-boiling. The sauce is thickened with flour, which holds its body at a simmer. Boiling it hard after the cream goes in can make dairy separate and thin, and the sauce can lose its smooth texture.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vinegar, oyster, butter, flour, cream, parsley, lemon):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, oyster, butter, flour, cream, parsley, 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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