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Cod and Parmesan Cheese

Cod fillets coated in egg, breadcrumbs, and Parmesan, fried in butter and served with a white sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Cod and Parmesan Cheese

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cod

  1. Remove the skin and bones from the cold cod and break it into convenient-sized pieces.

  2. Make a white sauce and warm the cod pieces in it, then drain them.

Coat the fish

  1. Dip each piece in beaten egg, then coat with bread crumbs and Parmesan cheese.

Cook and serve

  1. Thicken the gravy with arrowroot or flour and keep it hot in the saucepan.

  2. Fry the coated fish pieces in hot butter until lightly browned, about 8 to 10 minutes.

  3. Pour the sauce over the fish and serve hot.

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 + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Butter + parmesan cheesetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,163 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  4. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Bread + parmesan cheesetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together577 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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 through by frying and warming.
Butter
Fat for frying that carries heat and helps the coating brown.
White sauce
Keeps the cod moist while warming and forms the gravy served over the fish.
Beaten egg
Acts as a binder so the bread crumbs and cheese stick to the fish.
Bread crumbs
Forms a crisp coating that browns when fried in butter.
Parmesan cheese
Adds savory flavor to the coating and helps it brown.
Arrowroot or flour
Thickens the sauce so it clings to the fish when served.

The step that matters

Fry the coated fish pieces in hot butter. The butter must be hot enough to brown the coating quickly. If it is too cool, the crumbs absorb fat and turn greasy while the fish overcooks. Gentle, even heat keeps the fish moist inside.

Swap the arrowroot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, sauce, egg, bread, parmesan cheese):

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Tomatofits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Arrowrootthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sauce, egg, bread, parmesan cheese. 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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