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Salt Cod a LA Bordelaise

Salt cod baked with garlic, olive oil, butter, anchovies, shallot, parsley, lemon, and browned breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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 ↓

Salt Cod a LA Bordelaise

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the cod as directed.

  2. Tie the cod into shape to fit a fireproof dish.

  3. Rub the dish with a clove of garlic.

  4. Add olive oil, butter, anchovies, shallot, parsley, and lemon slices to the dish. Cook until nicely blended.

Cook and serve

  1. Lay the fish in the dish and simmer steadily for 30 minutes.

  2. Sprinkle with browned breadcrumbs and pass a salamander over it before serving.

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. Shallot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Garlic + olivetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,665 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  4. Garlic + parsleytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,308 recipes

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

  5. Garlic + shallottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,000 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Salt cod
Forms the main body of the dish and becomes flaky and tender when soaked and simmered.
Olive oil
Carries flavour and keeps the fish moist during the gentle simmer.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the sauce emulsify into a smooth, rounded finish.
Anchovies
Dissolve into the fat to add deep savoury flavour without tasting distinctly fishy.
Shallot
Adds a mild, sweet onion-like aroma to the fat as it cooks.

The step that matters

Simmering the fish steadily. Salt cod turns tough and stringy if it boils hard. A steady, gentle simmer lets the flesh cook through and flake while staying moist and tender.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (garlic, olive, butter, shallot, parsley, lemon):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against garlic, olive, butter, shallot, parsley, 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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