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Cod, Hashed

A cod hash simmered in stock with onion, flour, curry powder, butter, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Cod, Hashed

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, fry the cod slightly, then set aside.

  2. Add the sliced onion, flour, and curry powder to the butter in the saucepan, and fry for 15 minutes, stirring constantly.

  3. Pour in the stock, stir until it boils, then simmer gently for 20 minutes.

  4. Strain the mixture and return it to the saucepan.

Finish and serve

  1. Add lemon juice and seasoning to taste, and bring nearly to boiling point.

  2. Add the fish, cover closely, and let it sit for about 1 hour, stirring occasionally to prevent sticking.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

Flour and butter 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
Provides the flaky fish that forms the body of the dish.
Onion
Softens and sweetens as it fries, adding savoury depth to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a smooth sauce when cooked with the butter.
Curry powder
Adds warm, aromatic spice that flavours the sauce as it fries.
Butter
Carries the spices and onion while frying and adds richness.
Stock
Forms the liquid base of the sauce that the fish cooks in.

The step that matters

Add the fish, cover closely, and let it sit for about 1 hour. Standing in a simmering-hot sauce for a long time can break the fish apart and make it dry or tough. Stirring gently and keeping the sauce below a hard boil helps protect the flakes while preventing the flour-thickened sauce from scorching on the base of the pan.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Arrowrootfits better
  3. Okrafits better
  4. Onionthe original

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