Name: Cabillaud Frit a l’Indienne {Fried Cod, Indian Style}
Ingredients: 1 ½ lb cod (middle cut of tail end); 2 eggs; 3 French gherkins; 1 lemon; 2 tablespoons piccalilli; breadcrumbs; frying fat; salt; cayenne pepper

Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Cabillaud Frit a l’Indienne {Fried Cod, Indian Style}

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

Cut the fish into five or six neat scallops about ½ inch thick.
Season the scallops with salt and a little cayenne pepper.
Beat one egg and hard-boil the other.

Fry the fish

Dip the fish slices in the beaten egg, then coat them well with breadcrumbs.
Fry the coated slices in hot fat until golden brown, then drain.

Garnish and serve

Prepare a garnish by cutting gherkins, hard-boiled egg white, and piccalilli into julienne strips.
Warm the garnish in a little butter, moisten with fish stock, and arrange on the dish with fanciful-cut lemon slices.

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.

Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together44,316 recipes

Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).
Egg + peppertop 33% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together50,580 recipes

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

Egg and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 44,316 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Cod: Forms the main body of the dish, cooking to a flaky texture inside its crumb coating.
Eggs: Beaten egg acts as a binder so the breadcrumbs adhere to the fish.
Breadcrumbs: Form a crisp, golden coating when fried in hot fat.
Piccalilli: Adds sharp, tangy acidity that cuts through the rich fried coating.

The step that matters

Fry the coated slices in hot fat until golden brown. If the fat is not hot enough, the breadcrumb coating absorbs oil and turns greasy before it crisps, while the fish may cook unevenly. Hot fat sets the crumb quickly, sealing in moisture and producing a crisp, browned crust.

“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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Cabillaud Frit a l’Indienne {Fried Cod, Indian Style}