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Cod with Parsley Butter

A cod dish served with a butter sauce flavored with onion, parsley, lemon, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Cod with Parsley Butter

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cod

  1. Boil the cod, then separate it into large flakes.

Make the parsley butter

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan, add the onion, and fry for 1 to 3 minutes without browning.

  2. Add the parsley, lemon juice, a pinch of pepper, and the cod to the pan.

  3. Shake gently over low heat until heated through, then serve.

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 + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  4. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  5. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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, flaking into tender pieces when cooked.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, carrying the flavour of the onion, parsley and lemon.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the buttery sauce and balances the richness of the fish.

The step that matters

Fry the onion without browning. Onion cooked gently in butter turns sweet and mild; if it browns, it becomes bitter and can taint the delicate parsley butter and fish.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, parsley, lemon, pepper. 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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