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Codfish Toast

A toast topped with fried codfish, onions, tomatoes, and cayenne.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and tomato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 20,633 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Codfish Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Make the codfish mixture

  1. Fry the sliced onion in butter until soft.

  2. Add the codfish and enough water to cover it.

  3. Stir in the sliced tomatoes and cook for 30 to 45 minutes.

  4. Add a pinch of cayenne to taste.

Serve

  1. Serve the mixture over buttered toast.

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. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  2. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Butter + tomatotop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,918 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Codfish
Provides the main savory protein and flaky texture of the topping.
Onion
Softens and sweetens as it fries, building a savory base for the dish.
Butter
Adds fat for frying the onion and richness to the mixture.
Tomatoes
Break down during cooking to add moisture, acidity and body to the mixture.

The step that matters

Cooking the onion in butter until soft. Frying gently until the onion is fully soft lets its sugars develop mild sweetness and avoids a raw, sharp flavour in the finished mixture.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, 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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