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Baked Codfish and Oyster Sauce

A dish of baked cod fillets served with a sauce made from oysters, butter, flour, milk and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Baked Codfish and Oyster Sauce

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 and bake the cod

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Butter a sauté pan thickly and place the cod slices in it.

  3. Sprinkle with white pepper, salt, and lemon juice.

  4. Pour in the water and cover with a thickly buttered round of white paper.

  5. Bake for about 15 minutes, until the cod flakes easily from the bone.

  6. Transfer the cod to a hot dish and strain any liquid from the pan over it.

Make the oyster sauce

  1. For the oyster sauce, bring the oysters and their liquor to a boil.

  2. Remove the oysters, beard them, and cut them into two or three pieces.

  3. Strain the liquor through muslin and set aside.

  4. In a saucepan, mix the butter and flour until combined, then add the milk.

  5. Bring to a boil, then stir in the oyster liquor, seasonings, and oysters.

  6. Add just enough cream to achieve the desired sauce consistency and serve hot.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + oystertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,184 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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, cooking through to flake easily when done.
Butter
Enriches the fish and, with flour, thickens the sauce while adding richness.
Flour
Combines with butter to form a roux that thickens the milk into a sauce.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, which thickens when brought to a boil.
Cream
Adds richness and smoothness, letting the cook adjust the sauce's consistency.
Oysters
Provide a briny, savoury flavour and tender texture to the sauce.

The step that matters

Bring the flour and butter roux to a boil before adding the cream. Cooking the milk-thickened sauce to a boil lets the flour starch swell and thicken it fully. Adding cream afterward, in small amounts, keeps the sauce smooth and lets the cook control its consistency.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, lemon, oyster, cream, milk, flour):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Cinnamonfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, lemon, oyster, cream, milk, flour. 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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