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Boiled Cod

A boiled cod served with a sauce of butter, flour, eggs, pickle, and gravy, garnished with egg whites and fried bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Boiled Cod

Ingredients

Directions

Poach the fish

  1. Sew the fish in a clean piece of mosquito netting.

  2. Cook in boiling salted water for 15 minutes per pound.

  3. Unwrap the fish.

  4. Pour a few spoonfuls of sauce over it.

Make the sauce

  1. Strain and skim the cooking liquid.

  2. Heat it in a saucepan.

  3. Stir in the butter rolled in flour.

  4. Bring to a boil, then boil once.

  5. Add the pounded yolks of the hard-boiled eggs and minced cucumber pickle.

  6. Serve.

Make the egg topping

  1. Pound the boiled yolks.

  2. Mix with butter, parsley, seasoning, and raw eggs.

  3. Beat until stiff.

  4. Rub through a colander.

  5. Mince the egg whites until fine.

  6. Stir in hot gravy for 5 minutes with a tablespoon of crumbs.

Assemble and brown

  1. Garnish the fish with rings of egg whites and sliced pickles.

  2. Form a mound of yolks in the center of a dish.

  3. Surround the mound with egg whites.

  4. Create a wall with triangles of fried bread.

  5. Sift fine crumbs over the top.

  6. Brown in the oven.

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 + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Cucumber + parsleytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,564 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  3. Cucumber + peppertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,991 recipes

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

  4. Fish + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 recipes

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

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

Cod fish
Forms the main body of the dish, cooked gently in salted water until flaky.
Hard-boiled eggs
Yolks are pounded to enrich the sauce and to form a firm, smooth topping.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the sauce a smooth, rounded mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a sauce when stirred in with butter.
Cucumber pickle
Adds a sharp acidity that cuts through the richness of the eggs and butter.
Fine bread crumbs
Form a dry layer that browns in the oven and adds a crisp top.

The step that matters

Stir in the butter rolled in flour. Flour must be dispersed evenly into the hot liquid, and stirring while it heats prevents lumps. Flour thickens liquid when its starch swells, so the sauce only turns smooth and glossy if it is stirred until it comes to a simmer.

Swap the cucumber

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Cucumberthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, butter, flour, egg, chicken, parsley, 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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