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Boiled Cod

A cod fish boiled with salt, cayenne pepper, and served with butter, eggs, or oyster sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Fish and oyster work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 496 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Boiled Cod

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Place the cod in cold water with a handful of coarse sea salt and let it soak for one hour.

  2. Scrape and wash the fish clean, then rub a little salt and cayenne pepper into the body.

Cook and serve

  1. Dust a cloth with flour, wrap the fish tightly, and place it in boiling water.

  2. Once boiling, cook for thirty minutes or until done, depending on the size of the fish.

  3. Serve with drawn butter and chopped hard boiled eggs, or with oyster 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. Fish + oystertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together496 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Egg + oystertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,103 recipes

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

Flour and butter 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

Cod
Provides the main body of the dish, cooked gently in boiling water until it flakes.
Hard boiled eggs
Add soft, rich texture and a mild savoury flavour to the finished dish.
Drawn butter
Adds fat and richness, moistening the mild cooked fish.

The step that matters

Cooking the wrapped fish in boiling water. Fish proteins toughen and dry out if overcooked, so the fish should be checked for doneness at the stated time, since size changes how long it takes.

“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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