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Baked Codfish. Caper Sauce

Baked codfish served with a caper sauce made from the fish's cooking liquid, capers, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Olive and capers match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,688 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Baked Codfish. Caper Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Clean the codfish and cut it into portion pieces.

  2. Season with salt and pepper, then roll in flour.

  3. Dip the fish in melted bacon fat or olive oil.

Bake and make the sauce

  1. Arrange on a baking pan and bake until browned on both sides.

  2. Boil the head with an onion and grated carrot.

  3. Make a butter sauce from the cooking liquid, adding capers and caper vinegar.

Serve

  1. Serve the fish garnished with lemon and parsley, with the sauce on one end.

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. Olive + caperstop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,688 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  3. Capers + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,222 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Pepper + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  5. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Codfish
Provides the main protein, which firms and turns opaque as it cooks.
Flour
Forms a dry coating that helps the fish brown in the oven.
Bacon fat or olive oil
Carries moisture and fat to the surface, promoting browning and keeping the fish from drying.
Capers
Add a sharp, salty acidity that cuts the richness of the butter sauce.
Caper vinegar
Adds acidity and tang to the sauce.

The step that matters

Browning the fish on both sides. Fish is lean and cooks quickly, so it can dry out before it browns. Coating with flour and fat helps it brown evenly, and turning it ensures both sides set without overcooking the thin edges.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, flour, olive, carrot, capers, vinegar, lemon):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Kalefits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, flour, olive, carrot, capers, vinegar, 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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