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Stewed Cod

A cod stew with veal gravy, bread crumbs, arrowroot, spices, anchovy essence, wine, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Arrowroot and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 553 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Stewed Cod

Ingredients

Directions

Poach the fish

  1. Bring salted water to a boil and gently boil the cod slices for 5 minutes.

  2. Remove the fish and let it drain.

Make the sauce

  1. In a wide stewpan, heat the veal gravy or broth.

  2. Add the fish and stew for 5 minutes.

  3. Stir in the bread crumbs.

  4. Simmer for 3 minutes.

  5. Mix the arrowroot with the sauce until smooth.

  6. Add mace, cayenne, essence of anchovies, white wine, and lemon juice.

  7. Boil the mixture for 2 minutes.

Serve

  1. Carefully lift out the fish.

  2. Pour the sauce over it.

  3. Serve immediately.

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. Arrowroot + lemontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together553 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Fish + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  4. Fish + white winetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together370 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Fish + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,889 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Cod
Forms the flaky main body of the dish, cooked gently so it stays moist.
Bread crumbs
Soak up liquid and thicken the sauce, giving it body.
Arrowroot
Starch that thickens the sauce to a smooth, glossy consistency.
White wine
Adds acidity and depth of flavour to the sauce.
Lemon juice
Brightens the sauce with acidity that balances the rich gravy.
Essence of anchovies
Adds savoury, salty depth to the sauce.

The step that matters

Mix the arrowroot into the sauce until smooth. Arrowroot clumps if added to hot liquid without being fully dispersed first. Stirring it smoothly into the sauce before boiling lets the starch thicken evenly.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, veal, bread, arrowroot, white wine, lemon):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, veal, bread, arrowroot, white wine, lemon. 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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