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Boiled Cod with Hollandaise Sauce

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 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 slowly to a boil; the fish is done when the fins can be easily pulled out.

  3. Remove the pot from the heat and let the fish sit in the water until ready to serve.

Make the hollandaise

  1. While the fish is boiling, melt the butter and flour in a saucepan over medium heat, stirring constantly until it bubbles.

  2. Gradually add ½ cup boiling water, then remove from heat and stir in the yolks of the eggs one at a time.

  3. Add the salt, vinegar, and oil drop by drop, stirring constantly until smooth.

Serve

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Butter + vinegartop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,513 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  5. Flour + vinegartop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,652 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

Codfish
Forms the main body of the dish, cooked gently in water until flaky.
Eggs
Egg yolks emulsify with the butter and oil, thickening the sauce and giving it richness.
Butter
Adds fat and flavour to the sauce and forms the base roux with the flour.
Flour
Cooked with butter to form a roux that thickens the sauce.
Oil
Added drop by drop to the yolks, helping build a smooth, stable emulsion.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the rich sauce and helps stabilise the emulsion.

The step that matters

Adding the oil and vinegar drop by drop. Adding fat too quickly to the egg yolks can break the emulsion, causing the sauce to separate. Slow addition while stirring lets the yolks absorb the oil and keeps the sauce smooth.

“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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