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Baked Codfish

A codfish stuffed with breadcrumbs, onion, suet, pepper, salt, and egg, baked and basted with butter or dripping.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Baked Codfish

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Prepare the codfish for cooking without beheading it.

Stuff and sew

  1. Fill the inside of the codfish with bread crumbs, chopped onion, chopped suet, pepper, salt, and moisten with the egg.

  2. Sew up the fish and place it in a baking dish.

Bake

  1. Bake at 350°F (175°C), basting with butter or dripping occasionally.

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. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  3. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  4. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Bread + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,676 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg
Binds the stuffing together and helps it hold its moisture during baking.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and give the stuffing a soft, bulky texture.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the stuffing moist and rich as it cooks.
Butter or dripping
Basting adds fat to the surface, promoting moisture and gentle browning.

The step that matters

Basting with butter or dripping. Fish is lean and dries out quickly in the oven. Regular basting adds fat to the surface, which helps keep the flesh moist and promotes light browning.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, pepper, egg, butter):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, pepper, egg, butter. 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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