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Lobsters and Salted Cod-fish

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Potato and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,107 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Lobsters and Salted Cod-fish

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Plunge live lobsters into boiling water and boil until the shell turns red.

  2. Soak salt cod-fish in a pan of cold water with the skin side up to extract the salt.

  3. In the morning, cover the fish with water and bring to a boil.

  4. Cover tightly and cook on low heat for 5 to 6 hours.

  5. Serve the cooked fish with potatoes, beets, carrots, and salt pork or butter sauce.

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. Potato + carrottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  2. Potato + porktop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  3. Fish + porktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together668 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  4. Fish + potatotop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together134 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  5. Carrot + porktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,772 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

Swap the carrot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lobster, fish, potato, pork):

  1. Onionfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Carrotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lobster, fish, potato, pork. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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