Skip to main content
Main

Stewed Cod

Stewed cod with butter, oysters, mace, pepper, salt, bread crumbs, sweet herbs, and optional white wine.

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

Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Stewed Cod

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Place slices of cod-fish in a stew pan.

  2. Add butter, oysters with their liquor, mace, pepper, salt, bread crumbs, and sweet herbs.

  3. If using, add white wine.

  4. Stew gently for a short time.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Fish + oystertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together496 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Butter + white winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Fish + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

What each ingredient does

Cod-fish
Forms the body of the dish, becoming flaky and tender as it stews.
Oysters
Add briny flavour and extra moisture as their liquor mingles with the stew.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour and giving a smooth mouthfeel.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and slightly thicken the stewing liquid, adding body.

The step that matters

Stew gently for a short time. Fish protein toughens and dries when overcooked or boiled hard, so a gentle, brief simmer keeps the cod tender and the oysters from shrinking and turning rubbery.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, butter, oyster, pepper, bread, white wine):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, butter, oyster, pepper, bread, white wine. 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.

More stewed cod recipes

in Brown Sauce 12Fish 5Fish in Brown Sauce 4 See all 34 →

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesFried FishFried Fish120 recipesFish CroquettesFish Croquettes81 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipes