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Cod Au Blanc

Cod au Blanc is cod fillets served in a butter, flour, 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

Prepare the cod

  1. Sprinkle coarse sea salt over the cod.

  2. Let the cod sit for 1–2 days.

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

  4. Bring the water to a boil.

  5. Cover the kettle and let the cod sit for 10–15 minutes.

  6. Drain the cod.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt butter in a saucepan.

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

Serve

  1. Serve the hot cod on a dish.

  2. Pour the sauce over the cod.

  3. For dressed cod, warm the slices in the sauce before serving.

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
Forms the main body of the dish, cooked gently in hot water until flaky.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the fish and firms its flesh during the resting period.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour into the sauce base.
Flour
Thickens the butter and cream into a smooth, pourable sauce.
Cream
Adds richness and body, giving the sauce a silky texture.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour into the melted butter. Stirring the flour into the melted butter cooks it into a roux. Adding cream without enough stirring can leave lumps, so the sauce should be whisked smooth as the cream goes in.

“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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