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Baked Cod

A baked cod stuffed with a bread and butter mixture, served with a brown flour and claret gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Baked Cod

Why it works: Bread and butter 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 ↓

Baked Cod

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Ask your fish dealer for a 4-pound cod and 3 codfish heads.

  2. Rub a little coarse sea salt on the fish and chop the heads into 6 pieces each, sprinkling salt over them.

  3. Place the heads in the center of a baking pan with ½ cup of water.

  4. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C) and soak enough bread in cold water until soft.

  5. Drain the bread, pound it to a paste, and mix with 2 tablespoons melted butter, 2 eggs, Worcestershire sauce, salt, and pepper.

  6. Stuff the mixture inside the fish and sew it up.

Bake and serve

  1. Place the cod in the pan with 2-3 tablespoons of butter on top and baste frequently.

  2. Cook for 1 hour, then transfer the fish to a hot platter.

  3. Add 1 tablespoon of brown flour and ⅓ cup of claret to the pan, mix, and strain the gravy into a sauceboat.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Bread + fishtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

Eggs
Bind the bread stuffing so it holds together around the fish.
Bread
Soaked and pounded into a paste, it gives the stuffing body and moisture.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, and helps the fish brown while basting.
Brown flour
Thickens the pan juices into a gravy.
Claret
Adds acidity and flavour to the pan gravy.

The step that matters

Basting frequently in the pan. Spooning melted butter and pan juices over the fish keeps the surface moist during the hour of baking and encourages even browning, helping prevent the flesh from drying out.

“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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