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Stewed Cod

Stewed Cod is a fish stew made with cod, butter, mace, bread crumbs, pepper, sea salt, sweet herbs, oysters, and sherry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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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 ↓

Stewed Cod

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Cut the finest pieces of cod from the thickest part of the fish.

  2. Place the cod in a stewpan with butter, mace, bread crumbs, pepper, salt, sweet herbs, and oysters with their liquor.

  3. Stew gently until nearly done.

  4. Add sherry and continue to stew until fully cooked.

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. Fish + oystertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together496 recipes

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

  3. Fish + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

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

  5. Butter + oystertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,184 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cod
Forms the main body of the dish, flaking into tender pieces as it cooks.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, keeping the fish from drying out during stewing.
Oysters
Contribute their briny flavour and liquor, seasoning the stew from within.
Bread crumbs
Lightly thicken the cooking liquid and give the stew body.
Sherry
Adds acidity and aroma, rounding out the flavour of the stew.

The step that matters

Adding the sherry and finishing the stew. Adding sherry near the end lets its aroma stay bright, while stewing gently keeps the cod tender. Boiling hard would toughen the fish and make it dry and stringy.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, butter, bread, pepper, oyster, sherry):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, butter, bread, pepper, oyster, sherry. 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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