Why it works: Fish and pork work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 668 recipes. Both carry 4-heptenal, which smells creamy, biscuit. The science ↓
Fried Cod
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Cut the cod into squares and wash it. Wipe the fish dry.
Mix the flour, cornmeal, and salt thoroughly.
Dip the fish into the mixture.
Fry and serve
Heat a frying pan with boiling fat.
Drop the fish into the fat and fry until dark brown on one side, then turn and fry the other side carefully.
Serve the fish on a hot dish and garnish with fried pork.
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.
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Fish + porktop 12% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together668 recipes
Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).
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Flour + porktop 27% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together11,187 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Flour + fishtop 27% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together2,532 recipes
Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).
Flour and pork barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 11,187 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
What each ingredient does
- Cod fish
- Forms the main body of the dish, cooking through to a flaky texture.
- Flour
- Forms a dry coating that browns and crisps in the hot fat.
- Cornmeal
- Adds a gritty, crunchy texture to the coating as it fries.
- Boiling fat
- Conducts heat to cook the fish quickly and drives browning of the coating.
The step that matters
Drop the fish into the fat and fry until dark brown on one side. The fat must be hot enough before the fish goes in. A hot pan sears the coating quickly, so it crisps and seals rather than absorbing grease and sticking. Turning gently preserves the coating.
“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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