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Cod Pie

A savory pie filled with cod, butter, broth, and a creamy sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cod

  1. Salt the cod well and let it sit overnight.

  2. Wash the cod and season with pepper, salt, and a little nutmeg.

  3. Place the cod in a dish, add butter and a little broth.

Bake and serve

  1. Cover with a pie crust and bake until done.

  2. For the sauce, combine broth, cream, flour, butter, lemon zest, and nutmeg; bring to a boil.

  3. Pour the hot sauce into the pie 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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  4. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  5. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Cod
Forms the flaky main filling that the pie is built around.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavor through the fish and sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce so it clings to the fish rather than running off.
Cream
Adds body and a smooth, rich texture to the sauce.
Pie crust
Encloses the fish and steam so it cooks gently under cover.

The step that matters

Bring the sauce to a boil before pouring it in. Flour only thickens fully once it reaches a boil, so a sauce that is not brought to a boil stays thin and runny in the pie.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, nutmeg, butter, cream, flour):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Limefits about as well
  4. Coconutfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, nutmeg, butter, cream, flour. 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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