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Codfish Dinner

A simple dinner of codfish served with boiled potatoes, boiled beets, and optional onions, topped with drawn butter gravy, pork scraps, and hard boiled eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,023 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Codfish Dinner

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the codfish in plenty of water early in the morning.

Cook and serve

  1. About an hour before dinner, place the fish on the back of the stove to cook slowly without boiling.

  2. Prepare boiled potatoes and boiled beets, or onions if preferred.

  3. Serve drawn butter gravy and pork scraps in a separate dish.

  4. Garnish the fish with hard boiled eggs.

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. Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  2. Potato + porktop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  3. Onion + porktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,214 recipes

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

  4. Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  5. Butter + porktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,933 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Codfish
Is the main protein; soaking removes salt so the fish cooks to a mild, tender texture.
Drawn butter gravy
Adds richness and moisture, balancing the lean, mild flavour of the fish.
Boiled potatoes
Provide starch and bulk, soaking up the butter gravy and filling the plate.

The step that matters

Cooking the fish without boiling. Holding the fish just below a simmer keeps its proteins tender and flaky; boiling toughens and breaks the flesh apart.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, butter, pork, egg):

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Chivefits about as well
  3. Onionthe original
  4. Capsicumfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, butter, pork, egg. 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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