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Codfish Steak.

A codfish steak seasoned with salt, coated in cornmeal, fried in pork fat, served with lemon, pepper, and buttered Johnny cake.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper 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 ↓

Codfish Steak.

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Cut the codfish into steaks about 1.5 inches thick and sprinkle with coarse sea salt.

  2. Let the steaks stand for 2 hours.

  3. Dredge the codfish steaks in cornmeal.

Render the pork fat

  1. Dice the salt pork and fry it in a pan until all the fat is rendered.

  2. Remove the crisp bits of pork.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat the pork fat until smoking hot.

  2. Fry the steaks until dark brown on both sides.

  3. Squeeze lemon juice over the steaks and add freshly ground pepper.

  4. Serve with hot, well-buttered Johnny cake.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Pork + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,933 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  3. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

  4. Pork + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,121 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

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, cooking to a flaky, tender texture.
Cornmeal
Coats the steaks, forming a crisp, browned crust when fried.
Salt pork
Renders fat for frying and leaves crisp bits that add savory flavor.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, fried fish.

The step that matters

Heat the pork fat until smoking hot. Fish placed in fat that is not hot enough absorbs more oil and steams instead of browning. A properly hot fat sears the cornmeal coating quickly, producing a crisp, dark crust while keeping the inside moist.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, pepper, butter):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Mangofits about as well
  3. Plumfits less well
  4. Avocadofits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, pepper, butter. 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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