Name: Boiled Cod
Ingredients: 1 whole cod fish; ½ cup coarse sea salt; 1 cup butter; 2 tablespoons flour; 2 boiled egg yolks; 1 tablespoon chopped green pickle

Why it works: Fish and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,488 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Boiled Cod

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

Wrap the fish in a piece of mosquito netting.
Bring a large pot of water to a boil and add the salt.
Add the fish and boil for 12 minutes per pound.
Remove the fish and unwrap it.
Place the fish on a hot dish.

Make the sauce and serve

In a separate pan, melt the butter and whisk in the flour.
Stir in the pounded egg yolks and chopped pickle.
Pour the sauce over the fish and serve.

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.

Fish + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,488 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together106,462 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together118,967 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Fish + eggtop 22% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,782 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, 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: Provides the main body of the dish, cooked gently in salted water.
Butter: Forms the fat base of the sauce and carries its flavour and smooth richness.
Flour: Thickens the melted butter into a smooth base for the sauce.
Egg yolks: Enrich the sauce and give it body and a creamy texture.

“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.