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Cod Scalloped

A baked cod dish with egg yolk, shrimp, bread crumbs, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Cod Scalloped

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Pound enough cold dressed cod to nearly fill your shells.

  2. Beat the egg yolk and pour it over the cod.

  3. Add the skinned shrimps, salt, pepper, and a little butter.

Bake and brown

  1. Do not fill the shells completely; strew fine bread crumbs over them.

  2. Drizzle melted butter on top.

  3. Brown them in a Dutch oven before the fire.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Shrimp + buttertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,931 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  3. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  4. Pepper + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

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

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold dressed cod
Forms the main body of the filling, providing flaky texture and bulk.
Egg yolk
Binds the pounded cod together so the filling holds its shape when cooked.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, and helps the crumb topping brown.
Fine bread crumbs
Forms a crisp, golden topping that browns during cooking.

The step that matters

Brown them in a Dutch oven before the fire. Browning needs steady, direct heat. Too little heat leaves the crumbs pale and the filling underdone, while too much can scorch the crumb topping before the cod is cooked through.

“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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