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To Stew Cod

A cod stew with wine, water, lemon, oysters, butter, mace, and herbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon 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 ↓

To Stew Cod

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Lay the cod slices in the bottom of a large stewpan.

  2. Season with nutmeg, black pepper, coarse sea salt, sweet herbs, and onion.

Stew

  1. Add white wine and water, cover, and simmer gently for 5-6 minutes.

  2. Squeeze in lemon juice.

  3. Add oysters and strained liquor.

  4. Add the butter rolled in flour.

  5. Add mace.

  6. Cover.

  7. Let it stew gently, shaking the pan often.

  8. Remove sweet herbs and onion.

Serve

  1. Dish it up.

  2. Pour sauce over.

  3. Garnish with lemon.

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

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

  2. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  3. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  4. White wine + buttertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. White wine + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

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, becoming flaky and tender as it gently stews.
Butter rolled in flour
Flour and butter thicken the cooking liquid into a smooth, rich sauce.
Oysters
Add briny, savoury flavour to the cooking liquor.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma to the stewing liquid.

The step that matters

Simmer gently, not hard. Fish proteins toughen and dry out quickly at a vigorous boil, so a gentle simmer keeps the cod flaky and tender while the sauce thickens.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (nutmeg, pepper, white wine, lemon, oyster, butter, egg):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against nutmeg, pepper, white wine, lemon, oyster, butter, egg. 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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