Skip to main content
Main

Crimped Cod

Crimped Cod is cod cured in salted spring water with vinegar, then boiled, garnished with parsley, lemon, horseradish, served with shrimp and oyster sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Crimped Cod

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the fresh cod into handsome slices.

  2. Soak the cod in salted spring water with ⅓ cup of vinegar for about 3 hours.

Cook and serve

  1. In a large pot, bring spring water with a large handful of coarse sea salt to a boil.

  2. Add the cod to the boiling water and cook for 10 minutes.

  3. Carefully remove the cod and place it on a serving plate.

  4. Garnish with sprigs of parsley, sliced lemon, and curls of scraped horseradish.

  5. Serve with shrimp and oyster 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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Parsley + horseradishtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together562 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Lemon + horseradishtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,155 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Shrimp + oystertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together531 recipes

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

  5. Vinegar + horseradishtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Fresh cod
Forms the main protein, cooked gently in salted water until flaky.
Vinegar
Adds acidity during the soak, brightening the mild flavour of the fish.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the cod and the poaching water.

The step that matters

Add the cod to the boiling water and cook for 10 minutes. Once the water is at a rolling boil, cod cooks quickly and can turn dry and tough if left too long. Timing the 10 minutes and removing the fish promptly keeps the flesh moist and tender.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vinegar, parsley, horseradish, shrimp, sauce, oyster):

  1. Limefits about as well
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Avocadofits about as well
  4. Cherryfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, parsley, horseradish, shrimp, sauce, oyster. 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.

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesMock Oyster SoupMock Oyster Soup21 recipesHorseradish SauceHorseradish Sauce17 recipesCorn FrittersCorn Fritters6 recipes