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Cod Au Blanc

Cod au Blanc is cod fillets salted, boiled, and served with a butter, flour, pepper, and cream sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,015 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Cod Au Blanc

Ingredients

Directions

Salt the cod

  1. Sprinkle coarse sea salt over the cod.

  2. Let the salted cod sit for 1-2 days.

Poach the cod

  1. Place the cod in a fish kettle filled with cold water.

  2. Bring the water to a boil, then cover the kettle.

  3. Let the cod sit in boiling water for 10-15 minutes.

  4. Drain the cod.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add flour, pepper, and cream to the melted butter.

  3. Serve the hot cod on a dish.

  4. Pour the sauce over the cod.

  5. Warm the cod slices in the sauce.

  6. Serve the dressed cod.

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

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

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

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

  3. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Cream + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

What each ingredient does

Cod
Salting firms the flesh, and gentle poaching cooks it into moist, flaky pieces.
Butter
Provides fat and richness, carrying flavor into the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the melted butter and cream into a smooth sauce as its starch swells with heat.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, giving the sauce a silky body.

The step that matters

Poaching the cod in boiling water. Fish proteins toughen and dry out when overheated, so the cod should be checked early and not left in boiling water longer than needed to cook through.

“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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