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Cod with Parsley Butter

A cod fillet served with a butter sauce flavored with onion, parsley, lemon juice, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 with Parsley Butter

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Boil the cod.

  2. Separate the cooked cod into large flakes.

Make the parsley butter

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add the onion and fry for 2-3 minutes without browning.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the parsley, lemon juice, a pinch of pepper, and the fish to the pan.

  2. Shake gently over the heat until everything is hot, then 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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

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

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Cod
Provides the main body of the dish, flaking into tender pieces that soak up the butter.
Butter
Supplies fat and richness, carrying the flavour of the herbs and onion through the dish.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the buttery sauce and balances its richness.
Onion
Adds a mild aromatic base when gently softened in the butter.
Parsley
Adds fresh, green aroma to the butter sauce.

The step that matters

Add the onion and fry for 2-3 minutes without browning.. Onion cooked gently in butter turns sweet and mellow. If it browns, it turns bitter and darkens the sauce, so the flavour of the whole dish changes.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, parsley, 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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