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To Stew Codfish

A stewed codfish dish with wine, gravy, oysters, and mace.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 Codfish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Season the codfish slices with pepper and coarse sea salt.

Stew and serve

  1. Place them in a stewpan with water, gravy, white wine, lemon juice, oysters with their liquor, and butter rolled in flour, then add the blades of mace.

  2. Stew for about 30 minutes until the fish is cooked through.

  3. Serve with the sauce.

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Oyster + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,184 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

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

Codfish
Forms the main body of the dish, flaking into tender pieces as it cooks.
Butter rolled in flour
Flour thickens the cooking liquid into a sauce while butter adds richness and body.
Oysters
Release their liquor into the stew, adding briny, savoury flavour to the sauce.
White wine
Adds acidity and aromatic depth that balances the richness of the butter and sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and sharpens the seafood flavour.

The step that matters

Stewing the fish. Gentle simmering cooks the fish through while keeping it moist. Boiling hard can toughen the flesh and break the pieces apart, and the flour-thickened sauce can scorch or lump if left unstirred.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

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