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Sauce for Boiled Cod

This recipe uses a raw egg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Sauce for Boiled Cod

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a pot, combine boiling water and milk.

  2. Gradually stir in butter while boiling.

  3. Mix flour with cold water and add to the pot; stir until thickened.

  4. Remove from heat and add chopped yolk, beaten raw egg, pepper, salt, parsley, and lemon juice.

  5. Cover and let sit in hot water (not over fire) for 5 minutes, stirring occasionally.

  6. Pour some sauce over the fish and serve the rest in a separate dish.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  4. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, 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

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Parsleythe original
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Cardamomfits about as well
  4. Cinnamonfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, flour, egg, pepper, lemon. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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