Name: Codfish Fines Herbes
Ingredients: 1 pound codfish steak; coarse sea salt and black pepper to taste; ½ cup flour; 2 teaspoons chopped fine herbs; 2 tablespoons butter; ⅓ cup white wine; juice of ½ lemon

Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Codfish Fines Herbes

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).
Season the codfish steak with salt and pepper.
Dust the fish thoroughly with flour and place it in a cooking bag.

Bake and serve

Add the chopped herbs, butter, white wine, and lemon juice to the bag.
Close the bag and cook for 30 minutes.

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.

Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Butter + white winetop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,083 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
White wine + lemontop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,832 recipes

Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).
Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Pepper + white winetop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,433 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

Codfish steak: The main protein, which becomes flaky and moist as it cooks gently in the bag.
Flour: Coats the fish so the herb crust clings and helps the surface brown lightly.
Butter: Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour and keeping the fish moist as it cooks.
White wine: Adds moisture and acidity, creating steam and a bright, savoury sauce in the bag.
Lemon juice: Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the fish and the herbs.

“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.