Why it works: Flour and oyster are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 25% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,582 recipes. Both carry hexanal, which smells grass, green. The science ↓
Boiled Cod
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Soak the cod head and shoulder in cold water with a handful of salt for 1 hour.
Scrape it clean and rub a little salt into the body.
Dust a cloth with flour and tightly wrap the fish.
Cook and serve
Place the wrapped fish in boiling water and let it boil for 20 minutes, or longer if very large.
Serve with oyster sauce or a sauce made of eggs, cream, and flour.
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.
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Flour + oystertop 25% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together4,582 recipes
Shared aroma: hexanal (grass, green).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Cod head and shoulder
- Forms the main body of the dish, providing flaky, tender flesh when cooked through.
- Flour
- Dusted on the cloth, it helps the wrapping hold and keeps the fish from sticking to it.
The step that matters
Boiling the wrapped fish. Boiling at a steady rapid simmer cooks the flesh evenly; if the water stops boiling, the fish cooks slowly and may turn out unevenly done. Larger heads need more time to reach the centre.
“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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