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Codfish Pie

A baked pie of dressed codfish, liver, and seasonings topped with breadcrumbs and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Codfish Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

Assemble

  1. Spread a little cold oyster sauce at the bottom of a pie dish.

  2. Layer flakes of dressed codfish on top, adding small pieces of liver.

  3. Season each layer with black pepper, coarse sea salt, and a pinch of nutmeg.

  4. Repeat layers until the dish is full.

  5. For an improvement, add soaked and boiled sounds cut into small pieces.

Bake

  1. Top with bread crumbs and bits of fresh butter.

  2. Bake for 30 minutes until the top is browned.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sauce + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Dressed codfish
Forms the main body of the pie, providing the flaked filling that everything else is layered into.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden topping that browns in the oven.
Fresh butter
Melts over the topping, adding richness and helping it brown.
Cold oyster sauce
Adds a briny, savoury moisture to the layers beneath the fish.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (oyster, sauce, pepper, bread, butter, cream, flour):

  1. Nutmegthe original
  2. Capersfits about as well
  3. Parsleyfits about as well
  4. Tarragonfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against oyster, sauce, pepper, bread, butter, cream, 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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