Skip to main content
Main

Boiled Cod

A cod fillet boiled in salted water, served with a butter‑flour‑egg sauce, parsley, and capers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsley and capers match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,550 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Boiled Cod

Ingredients

Directions

Poach the fish

  1. Sew the piece of fish in a thin cloth, fitting it neatly to the shape.

  2. Boil in salted water for about 15 minutes per pound.

  3. Unwrap the fish carefully.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, heat the milk and water together.

  2. Stir in the butter cut into bits and rolled in flour until thickened.

  3. Gradually pour the mixture onto the beaten eggs, stirring continuously.

  4. Return the mixture to the saucepan and stir for one minute.

  5. Add salt, chopped parsley, and capers or nasturtium seeds.

  6. Remove from heat 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. Parsley + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,550 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Flour + caperstop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,024 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Thicken the sauce as they set when gently heated, giving it a creamy body.
Flour
Coats the butter so it thickens the milk and water into a smooth sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the sauce a smooth, rounded flavour.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, adding creaminess and mild sweetness.

The step that matters

Return the mixture to the saucepan and stir for one minute. Adding hot sauce to beaten eggs can scramble them. Pouring slowly while stirring tempers the eggs, and the brief gentle heating thickens the sauce without curdling it. Then remove from heat immediately to prevent overcooking.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Nutmegfits about as well
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Cinnamonfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, flour, egg, capers. 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.

More boiled cod recipes

Head and Shoulders 18Fish 9Head 5with Oyster Sauce 4With Egg Sauce 3Sauce for 3 See all 89 →

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes