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Cod Pie

A pie made with boiled cod, butter, shallot, parsley, pepper, nutmeg, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Cod Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cod

  1. Boil the cod until cooked, then either leave it whole or flake it from the bone and remove the skin.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine the butter, parsley, shallot, pepper, and nutmeg.

  2. Melt the butter gradually, ensuring it does not become oily.

  3. Once well mixed and heated, add the lemon juice and serve.

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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Shallot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Parsley + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

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, supplying the flaky texture.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture to the sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich butter.
Shallot
Adds a mild, savoury aromatic sweetness to the sauce.

The step that matters

Melting the butter gradually. If butter is heated too quickly, the emulsion breaks and it separates into oil and milk solids, leaving the sauce greasy rather than smooth. Melting slowly over gentle heat keeps it creamy.

Swap the shallot

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

  1. Shallotthe original
  2. Carrotfits about as well
  3. Spinachfits about as well
  4. Parsnipfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, parsley, pepper, nutmeg, lemon. 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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