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Codfish Steak.

Codfish steak seasoned with salt, fried in pork fat, served with lemon and Johnny Cake.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 codfish into steaks about 1.5 inches thick.

  2. Sprinkle steaks with coarse sea salt and let stand for 2 hours.

Render the pork

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

  2. Remove the crispy bits of pork.

Fry and serve

  1. Dredge codfish steaks in cornmeal.

  2. Fry steaks in hot pork fat until dark brown on both sides.

  3. Squeeze lemon juice over steaks and add a dash of 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 + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,121 recipes

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

  3. Pork + lemontop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,786 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

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, with firm flakes that hold up to frying.
Salt pork
Its rendered fat fries the steaks and adds savory, rich flavor.
Cornmeal
Forms a coating that browns and crisps during frying.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, fried flavors.

The step that matters

Fry steaks in hot pork fat until dark brown on both sides. Enough heat is needed so the cornmeal coating browns and crisps quickly. Browning creates flavor, while a cool pan lets the fish absorb grease and steam instead of crisping.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, 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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