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Baked Codfish

A baked codfish mixed with mashed potatoes and topped with a butter‑egg sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,456 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Baked Codfish

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the fish

  1. Soak the codfish overnight and clean it thoroughly.

  2. Place the fish in a stone crock and cover with water.

  3. Simmer the fish until tender.

  4. Pick over the fish and mash it finely.

Assemble

  1. Mix two-thirds of the mashed potatoes with one-third of the fish and season to taste.

  2. Transfer the mixture to a baking dish.

Bake and finish

  1. Bake at 400°F (200°C) until brown.

  2. Melt the drawn butter.

  3. Stir in the chopped 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 + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

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

  2. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Potato + eggtop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,978 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Codfish
Provides the main flaky protein that forms the body of the dish.
Mashed potatoes
Add bulk and moisture and help the mixture hold together.
Hard-boiled eggs
Bind the mixture and set when heated, giving it structure.
Drawn butter
Adds fat for richness and helps keep the mixture moist.

The step that matters

Simmer the fish until tender. Cod is lean and its proteins tighten quickly when overheated. Cooking only until it flakes keeps the fish moist and prevents a dry, tough texture in the final bake.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Leekfits about as well
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, 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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