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Boiled Cod

A boiled cod served with a sauce of milk, butter, flour, eggs, lemon, parsley, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Boiled Cod

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Soak the cod in cold water with a little salt for 30 minutes.

  2. Wipe the fish dry and wrap it in a clean linen cloth, fitting it to the shape of the cod.

  3. Place the wrapped fish in a fish kettle and cover with boiling salted water.

  4. Cook for nearly 1 hour for a 4‑pound piece.

Make the sauce

  1. For the sauce, combine 1 cup of boiling water and 1 cup of milk in a saucepan.

  2. Gradually stir in 2 tablespoons of butter while boiling.

  3. Mix in 1 tablespoon of flour that has been wet with cold water.

  4. As the sauce thickens, add the chopped yolk of a boiled egg and the beaten raw egg.

  5. Remove from heat and season with pepper, salt, chopped parsley, and lemon juice.

  6. Cover and let the sauce sit in boiling water (not over the fire) for 5 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Serve

  1. Pour some sauce over the fish when serving and offer the rest in a separate dish.

  2. Serve with mashed potatoes.

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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

  4. Parsley + potatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,855 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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, cooked gently in salted water until flaky.
Butter
Enriches the sauce with fat, adding smooth richness and body.
Flour
Thickens the milk sauce as it heats, giving it a smooth, coating texture.
Raw egg
Sets with gentle heat and further thickens and enriches the sauce.
Milk
Forms the creamy base of the sauce, adding softness and mild sweetness.

The step that matters

Adding the raw egg to the sauce. Egg proteins set when heated, so if the sauce is too hot or boils after the egg goes in, it can curdle or turn grainy. Add it while the sauce is thickening and keep the heat controlled.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, butter, flour, egg, pepper, parsley, lemon):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits about as well
  3. Asparagusfits about as well
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, flour, egg, pepper, parsley, 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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