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Cod Steaks

Cod steaks coated in flour and fried, served with lemon butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon 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 ↓

Cod Steaks

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash and thoroughly dry the fish.

  2. Mix together the flour, salt, and pepper, then coat the fish completely with the mixture.

  3. Heat a good layer of frying fat in a pan.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry the fish until crisp and well browned on both sides.

  2. Melt the butter and add the lemon juice.

  3. Optionally, add finely chopped parsley.

  4. Serve the fish with the oiled butter or simply with melted butter.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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, moist interior.
Flour
Coats the fish so the surface crisps and browns during frying.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour as the dish is served.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich butter and fried coating.

The step that matters

Fry until crisp and well browned on both sides. The fish must be thoroughly dry and the fat hot enough so the flour coating browns quickly. Wet fish or cool fat steams the coating, leaving it soggy and pale.

“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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