Skip to main content
Main

Cod, Stewed

A stewed cod dish with butter, stock, spices, sherry, lemon, and oysters.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Cod, Stewed

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Lightly fry the cod slices in butter or dripping until golden.

  2. Drain the cod from the fat and place in a stewpan.

Make the sauce and simmer

  1. Add stock, mace, cayenne, butter mixed with flour, anchovy essence, sherry, and lemon juice.

  2. Simmer for 8 minutes, then add chopped oysters and their liquor.

  3. Simmer for an additional 2 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve the cod on a hot dish, pouring the sauce over it.

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 + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Anchovy + oystertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together603 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + oystertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,184 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  5. Butter + anchovytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,697 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

Cod
Forms the flaky main body of the dish, cooked gently in the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour, and flour mixed in thickens the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the stock-based sauce so it coats the fish.
Oysters
Contribute a briny, savoury flavour to the sauce.
Sherry
Adds acidity and aromatic depth to the sauce.
Stock
Forms the liquid base of the sauce that the fish simmers in.

The step that matters

Frying the cod until golden. Browning the surface through the Maillard reaction builds flavour before the fish is stewed. Frying too gently leaves it pale and bland, while fish left too long can break apart once simmered in the sauce.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, pepper, flour, anchovy, sherry, lemon, oyster):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, flour, anchovy, sherry, lemon, oyster. 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.

More stewed cod recipes

in Brown Sauce 12Fish 5Fish in Brown Sauce 4 See all 34 →

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesMock Oyster SoupMock Oyster Soup21 recipesCorn FrittersCorn Fritters6 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipes