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Stewed Cod

Stewed cod simmered in veal gravy with breadcrumbs, arrowroot, spices, anchovy essence, wine, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Arrowroot and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 553 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Stewed Cod

Ingredients

Directions

Poach the cod

  1. Bring a pot of salted water to a boil.

  2. Gently add the cod slices.

  3. Boil for 5 minutes.

  4. Remove the cod slices and let them drain.

Make the sauce

  1. In a wide stewpan, heat the veal gravy or broth.

  2. Add the fish and stew for 5 minutes.

  3. Stir in the bread crumbs.

  4. Simmer for 3 minutes.

  5. Mix the arrowroot with a little water to remove lumps.

  6. Add the arrowroot mixture to the sauce along with mace, cayenne, essence of anchovies, white wine, and lemon juice.

  7. Boil for 2 minutes.

Serve

  1. Carefully lift out the fish.

  2. Pour the sauce over it.

  3. Serve immediately.

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. Arrowroot + lemontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together553 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Fish + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  3. White wine + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  4. Fish + white winetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together370 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Fish + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,889 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Cod
Forms the main body of the dish, becoming flaky and tender when gently cooked.
Veal gravy or broth
Provides the liquid base that the sauce is built on and carries the flavour.
Bread crumbs
Help thicken the sauce and give it body as they soak up liquid.
Arrowroot
Thickens the sauce to a glossy, smooth consistency without cloudiness.
White wine
Adds acidity and brightness that balances the rich gravy.
Essence of anchovies
Adds savoury depth, rounding out the sauce with a salty, umami note.

The step that matters

Mixing the arrowroot with water before adding it. Arrowroot clumps when it meets hot liquid unless first dispersed in cold water. Smoothing it out first lets it thicken the sauce evenly without lumps.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, veal, bread, arrowroot, white wine, lemon):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, veal, bread, arrowroot, white wine, lemon. 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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