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Cod Steaks with Tomato Puree

Cod steaks are steamed and served with a tomato puree sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 with Tomato Puree

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Wipe the fish dry and sprinkle with salt, lemon juice, and a little pepper on the underside.

  2. Place the fish on a buttered plate and cover with another buttered plate.

  3. Set the plate on top of a saucepan of boiling water and steam for 30 minutes, or until the fish begins to leave the bones.

  4. Lift the fish onto a towel to drain.

Make the tomato sauce

  1. In a pan, heat the butter and fry the sliced tomatoes and onion.

  2. Add the flour, mace, and seasonings, along with ½ pint of stock and the liquid from the fish.

  3. Simmer gently for 15 minutes.

  4. Rub through a fine sieve, adding more stock if too thin.

  5. Reheat the sauce.

Serve

  1. Pour the sauce over the fish, coating it entirely.

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

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

  2. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  3. Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  4. Tomato + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,592 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + oniontop 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 steaks
Forms the main body of the dish, becoming flaky and tender when steamed.
Tomatoes
Provide acidity, body and colour to the puree once fried and sieved.
Flour
Thickens the sauce so it coats the fish.
Butter
Adds richness and carries the flavour when frying the tomatoes and onion.
Fish stock
Adds savoury depth and liquid to the sauce.

The step that matters

Steaming the fish. Steaming over gently boiling water cooks the cod gently; too vigorous heat or too long toughens the flesh and dries it, so the fish should be checked as it begins to leave the bones.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, fish, pepper, butter, flour, onion, lemon):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, fish, pepper, butter, flour, onion, lemon. 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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