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Cod Pie

A savory pie made with cod, broth, butter, and a creamy sauce, topped with pie crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 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. The next day, wash the cod and season it with pepper, salt, and nutmeg.

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

Bake and finish

  1. Cover with pie crust and bake until done.

  2. For the sauce, combine broth, cream, flour, butter, lemon zest, and nutmeg in a pot.

  3. Bring the sauce to a boil and pour it into the pie through a hole in the center.

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, savory filling that the pie is built around.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce so it sets to a spoonable consistency.
Butter
Adds fat and rich flavor to the fish and the sauce.
Broth
Adds savory liquid that moistens the fish and flavors the sauce.

The step that matters

Bring the sauce to a boil. Flour thickens only when it is heated enough for its starch granules to swell, so the sauce must reach a full boil to set properly.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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