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Baked Codfish

A baked codfish mixed with mashed potatoes and hard‑boiled eggs, served with a butter‑egg sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,305 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Baked Codfish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Soak the codfish overnight.

  2. Clean the fish thoroughly.

  3. Place the fish in a stone crock.

  4. Cover the fish with water and simmer until tender.

  5. Remove the fish.

  6. Pick over the fish.

  7. Mash it finely.

Make and bake the mixture

  1. Mix two-thirds of the mashed potatoes with one-third of the fish.

  2. Season the mixture with salt and pepper.

  3. Bake the mixture until brown.

  4. Melt the drawn butter.

  5. Mix in the chopped hard-boiled eggs.

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. Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

  2. Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

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

  3. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Potato + eggtop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,978 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Codfish
Provides the flaky, savory body of the dish.
Mashed potatoes
Add bulk and moisture and help hold the mixture together.
Hard-boiled eggs
Bind the mixture and add richness and structure.
Drawn butter
Adds fat for richness and moisture in the finished dish.

The step that matters

Simmer the fish until tender. Gentle simmering cooks the fish through without toughening its proteins, so it flakes cleanly and blends evenly with the potatoes. Boiling it hard makes the flesh tough and dry.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, egg, butter):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Asparagusfits about as well
  3. Chivefits about as well
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, egg, butter. 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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