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Stewed Salt Cod

A stewed cod dish flavored with butter, flour, milk, pepper, and garnished with hard‑boiled eggs and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Stewed Salt Cod

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cod

  1. Scald the soaked cod by boiling it in water for 10 minutes.

  2. Scrape the cod to remove skin and bones, then flake it.

Make the stew

  1. In a stew-pan, combine the flaked cod with butter and flour.

  2. Add enough milk to moisten the mixture and stir well.

  3. Let it stew gently for 10 minutes.

  4. Season with pepper to taste and serve hot.

Serve

  1. Transfer to a deep dish, top with sliced hard-boiled eggs, and garnish with parsley.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  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. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, 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

Soaked cod
Forms the main body of the dish; scalding and flaking make it tender and easy to break into pieces.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded flavour to the stew.
Flour
Thickens the milk and cod mixture into a soft, cohesive sauce.
Milk
Moistens the flaked fish and forms the creamy liquid of the stew.

The step that matters

Stewing gently after adding the milk. Flour thickens liquid only when it is heated enough to swell its starch. Stirring well while adding milk prevents lumps, and gentle heat keeps the sauce smooth rather than scorched or broken.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Nutmegfits about as well
  2. Cinnamonfits about as well
  3. Parsleythe original
  4. Cardamomfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, milk, pepper, 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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