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Slices Op Cod Pish Fried

Fried slices of cod fish seasoned with salt, pepper or cayenne, flour, egg, breadcrumbs, served with melted butter and anchovy sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Anchovy and sauce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and 2,048 recipes mention both. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: egg, milk, wheat, fish (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the cod into slices nearly 1 inch thick.

  2. Season the slices with coarse sea salt and white pepper or cayenne.

  3. Flour the slices well.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry the slices until they are a clear, even brown on both sides.

  2. Drain the fried slices on a sieve before the fire.

  3. Serve on a well-heated napkin, garnished with crisped parsley.

  4. Serve with melted butter and anchovy 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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Anchovy + saucetop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together2,048 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Bread + buttertop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together27,145 recipes

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

  3. Fish + anchovytop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together615 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  4. Fish + breadtop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,661 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Bread + anchovytop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together1,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanol (green, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Cod
Forms the flaky, moist main body of the dish once cooked.
Flour
Dries the surface and helps form a light, browned crust during frying.
Butter
Adds richness and a rounded flavour when served melted over the fish.

The step that matters

Fry until evenly brown on both sides. Frying over steady, moderate heat lets the flour coating brown evenly without burning. Too hot a pan darkens the outside before the fish cooks through, while too cool a pan soaks the coating in oil and makes it greasy.

Flavor stand-ins for the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, flour, egg, bread, butter, anchovy, sauce):

  1. Capersbetter flavor fit
  2. Parsleybetter flavor fit
  3. Nutmegbetter flavor fit
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, flour, egg, bread, butter, anchovy, sauce. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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