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Baked Codfish

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 and clean it thoroughly.

  2. Put the fish into a stone crock and cover with water.

  3. Simmer until tender, then pick over and mash fine.

Mix and bake

  1. Mix two‑thirds of the mashed potatoes with the fish and season with salt, pepper, and butter.

  2. Bake until brown.

Make the sauce

  1. Make a sauce with drawn butter and cut up the hard‑boiled eggs into it.

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. Butter + eggtop 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
Forms the main body of the dish, providing the flaky protein base.
Mashed potatoes
Adds bulk and moisture, keeping the fish mixture soft rather than dry.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and browns during baking for flavour.
Hard-boiled eggs
Adds body and a firm, mild texture to the drawn butter sauce.

The step that matters

Bake until brown. Baking is needed for browning, which adds flavour and colour, but over-baking dries the mixture. Watch for colour rather than relying on a fixed time, since the record gives no time.

Swap the potato

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

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

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