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Crimped Cod

A cured cod dish soaked in vinegar and salt, then boiled and served with parsley, lemon, horseradish, shrimp sauce, and oyster sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Crimped Cod

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cod

  1. Cut the fresh cod into slices.

  2. Soak the slices in salted spring water with 1/3 cup vinegar for 3 hours.

Poach and serve

  1. Fill a fish kettle with spring water and add a large handful of coarse sea salt to the water.

  2. Bring the water to a boil.

  3. Add the cod to the boiling water and cook the cod for 10 minutes.

  4. Carefully remove the cod slices and place them on a fish plate.

  5. Garnish the cod with parsley, sliced lemon, and scraped horseradish.

  6. Serve the cod with shrimp sauce and 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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Parsley + horseradishtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together562 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Lemon + horseradishtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,155 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Shrimp + oystertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together531 recipes

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

  5. Vinegar + horseradishtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Fresh cod
Forms the main body of the dish, cooked by gentle poaching in salted water.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the cod and the poaching water, flavouring the flesh as it cooks.
Vinegar
Acidity from the soaking liquid brightens the flavour of the fish.

The step that matters

Cook the cod for 10 minutes. Cod is lean and turns dry and flaky-tough if overcooked. Keeping the water at a steady boil once the fish is added, and timing the cook closely, helps the slices stay moist and tender.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vinegar, parsley, horseradish, shrimp, sauce, oyster):

  1. Limefits about as well
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Avocadofits about as well
  4. Cherryfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, parsley, horseradish, shrimp, sauce, oyster. 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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