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Fricassee of Codfish

A codfish fricassee made with butter, flour, reserved fish stock, egg yolk, and optional parsley, served with toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Fricassee of Codfish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Wash and cut the codfish into 2‑inch squares, removing skin and bones.

  2. Place the fish in a pot with enough cold water to cover it by 1 inch and add salt.

  3. Slowly bring the water to a boil, then remove the fish with a skimmer and keep warm on a dish covered with a warm, damp towel.

  4. Strain the boiling water and reserve 1 pint.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter and flour together, then gradually stir in the reserved water.

  2. Season the sauce with salt and pepper, then add the fish and heat until the flakes begin to separate.

  3. Remove from heat and stir in the beaten egg yolk and vinegar; add parsley if using.

Serve

  1. Serve immediately with toast or fried bread.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

  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 + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, 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

Codfish
Provides the flaky white fish that forms the body of the dish.
Butter and flour
Melted together they form a roux that thickens the sauce.
Egg yolk
Enriches and thickens the sauce, giving it a richer, silkier texture.
Vinegar
Adds a sharp acidity that brightens the rich sauce.

The step that matters

Stirring in the egg yolk off the heat. Egg yolk thickens by gentle heat and can scramble or curdle if the sauce is too hot. Removing the pan from heat before stirring in the yolk keeps the sauce smooth.

Swap the parsley

The recipe marks parsley as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, butter, flour, pepper, egg, vinegar, bread):

  1. Parsleythe original
  2. Tarragonfits about as well
  3. Capersfits about as well
  4. Nutmegfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, butter, flour, pepper, egg, vinegar, bread. 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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