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Cod Pie

A baked cod pie with paste crust, stock sauce, and oysters.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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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 ↓

Cod Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the cod

  1. Lay the cod in salt for 4 hours, then wash it and place it in a dish.

  2. Season the cod with pepper and salt, then add the butter and stock.

Bake the pie

  1. Cover the cod with the paste crust and bake at 400°F (200°C) for 1 hour.

Make and add the sauce

  1. Mix the stock, cream or milk, and thickening for the sauce.

  2. Add lemon peel to the sauce and bring it to a boil.

  3. Pour the sauce into the pie through a hole in the crust.

  4. Cover the sauce with a small piece of pastry shaped like a leaf.

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

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

  2. Nutmeg + macetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  5. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Cod
Forms the main body of the pie, becoming flaky and tender when baked.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture to the fish as it bakes.
Cream or milk
Gives the sauce body and a smooth, rich texture.
Flour or butter thickening
Thickens the stock and cream into a sauce that holds its shape.
Paste crust
Encloses the fish and sauce, sealing in moisture while the pie bakes.

The step that matters

Pouring the sauce through the crust. The sauce must be hot and well thickened before it goes in, so it pours easily and does not thin the fish or leave the crust soggy.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, nutmeg, butter, sauce, cream, flour, lemon):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Cinnamonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, nutmeg, butter, sauce, cream, flour, lemon. 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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