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Boiled Cod-fish and Butter-sauce

A boiled cod fish served with drawn butter and garnished with hard-boiled eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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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-fish and Butter-sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Place the cod fish in cold water.

  2. Boil gently for fifteen minutes.

  3. Serve with drawn butter and garnish with hard-boiled eggs.

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

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

  2. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Fish + eggtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,782 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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 protein; gentle simmering keeps its flesh moist and flaky rather than tough.
Drawn butter
Adds richness and moisture to the fish when served as a sauce.

The step that matters

Boil gently for fifteen minutes. A gentle simmer cooks the fish evenly without a vigorous boil, which can toughen and break up the delicate flesh. Starting in cold water and heating gradually helps the fish cook through more uniformly.

“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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