Skip to main content
Main

Boiled Cod with Hollandaise Sauce

A boiled cod fillet served with a butter‑flour Hollandaise sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Vinegar and mustard are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,067 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Boiled Cod with Hollandaise Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Poach the cod

  1. Wash the codfish thoroughly and place it in a pot with cold, well-salted water.

  2. Bring the water to a slow boil.

  3. The fish is done when the fins can be easily pulled out.

  4. Remove the pot from the heat.

  5. Let the fish sit in the water until ready to serve.

Make the hollandaise sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Whisk in the flour until it bubbles.

  3. Gradually add ½ cup of boiling water, stirring constantly.

  4. Remove the sauce from the heat.

  5. Stir in the egg yolks one at a time.

  6. Stir in the dry mustard.

  7. Stir in the vinegar.

  8. Stir in the oil, mixing until smooth.

Serve

  1. Serve the fish garnished with parsley and the sauce in a sauceboat.

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. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + mustardtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,066 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

Codfish
Forms the main body of the dish, cooked gently in simmering water until flaky.
Eggs
Egg yolks emulsify with the butter and oil, thickening the sauce and giving it richness.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavor into the sauce.
Flour
Cooked with butter to form a roux that thickens the sauce.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances its richness.
Oil
Adds fat that helps make the sauce smooth and glossy.

The step that matters

Stir the sauce off the heat after adding the egg yolks. Egg yolks scramble and curdle when overheated, so the sauce must be removed from the heat before the yolks go in and stirred steadily to keep it smooth.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits about as well
  3. Cucumberfits about as well
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, butter, flour, vinegar. 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes