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Cod Fish Stew

A stew of cod fish simmered with tomatoes, garlic, onion, and olive oil.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Garlic and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Cod Fish Stew

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Soak the cod fish in cold water for 10 hours.

  2. Remove the bones and tear the fish into shreds.

Make the stew

  1. In a pan, brown the flour in the olive oil.

  2. Add the mashed garlic, chopped tomatoes, onion, and pepper to the pan.

  3. Pour in enough boiling water to create a thick stew.

  4. Add the cod fish to the gravy and cook slowly for 30 minutes.

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. Garlic + oniontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Olive + tomatotop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,539 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Olive + garlictop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,665 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  4. Garlic + tomatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,076 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  5. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Cod fish
Forms the main body of the stew, flaking into tender shreds as it cooks.
Flour
Browned in oil, it helps thicken the stew into a gravy.
Olive oil
Carries the flavour of the garlic and onion and helps brown the flour.
Tomatoes
Add moisture and acidity that give the stew its body and brightness.

The step that matters

Browning the flour in the olive oil. Flour browned too little leaves a raw, pasty taste, while browned too far it turns bitter. Stirring steadily over moderate heat gives an even golden colour and a nutty flavour before the liquid goes in.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, flour, olive, garlic, tomato, onion, pepper):

  1. Cuminfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, flour, olive, garlic, tomato, onion, pepper. 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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