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Cod Pie

A baked pie containing cod, butter, broth, cream, flour, and pie crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,015 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Cod Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cod

  1. Salt the cod well and let it sit overnight.

  2. The next day, wash the cod and season it with pepper, salt, and nutmeg.

Assemble and bake

  1. Place the cod in a dish, add butter and broth.

  2. Cover with pie crust and bake until done.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. For the sauce, mix broth, cream, flour, and butter, then add it to the pie before serving.

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 + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Nutmeg + creamtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Butter and flour 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
Forms the main body of the pie, flaking into tender pieces as it cooks.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the broth and cream into a sauce.
Pie crust
Encloses the fish and steam, giving the pie its structure and golden browning.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and flavour in the dish and sauce.

The step that matters

Salting the cod overnight. Salt draws moisture out of the fish and then the flesh reabsorbs some of the brine, which seasons it deeply and firms its texture. Too little time or too much salt can leave the fish either bland or overly salty.

“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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