Skip to main content
Main

Cod Cutlets

Cod cutlets coated in lemon, pepper, salt, egg yolk, and seasoned breadcrumbs, then fried until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lemon and parsley 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 Cutlets

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Rub the cod slice with lemon juice, pepper, and salt. Let it sit for 1 hour.

  2. Dry the cod slice with a cloth.

Coat

  1. Dip the cod slice in the egg yolk, then coat it with the seasoned bread crumbs mixed with dried parsley.

Fry

  1. Place the cutlet in a wire frying basket and immerse it in boiling fat.

  2. Fry until golden brown and cooked through.

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 + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 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. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. Bread + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,588 recipes

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

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 cutlet, cooking to a flaky texture inside a crisp coating.
Egg yolk
Acts as a binder that helps the bread crumbs adhere to the fish.
Seasoned bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden crust when fried.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the fish.

The step that matters

Drying the cod before coating. Moisture on the surface keeps the egg yolk and crumbs from sticking and can make the coating soggy and prevent browning in the hot fat.

“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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipes