Why it works: Anchovy and sauce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,057 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓
Cod Stewed
Ingredients
Directions
Poach the cod
Bring a saucepan of salted water to a boil.
Clean the cod and add it to the boiling water; boil gently for 5 minutes.
Remove the cod and let it drain.
Make the sauce
In a heated stewpan, add the veal gravy or broth.
Add the cod to the gravy and stew for 5 minutes.
Stir in the bread crumbs and simmer for 3 minutes.
Mix the arrowroot, anchovy sauce, sherry, and lemon juice, then stir into the gravy.
Boil everything together for 2 minutes.
For added flavor, add cleaned oysters with their strained liquor 2-3 minutes before removing the cod.
Serve
Carefully lift the fish out with a fish slice, pour the sauce over it, and serve immediately.
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.
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Anchovy + saucetop 2% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together2,057 recipes
Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
-
Arrowroot + lemontop 4% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together553 recipes
Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
-
Anchovy + oystertop 8% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together603 recipes
Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
-
Bread + anchovytop 10% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together1,260 recipes
Shared aroma: hexanol (green, fruity).
-
Bread + oystertop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together2,545 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, 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 body of the dish, cooked gently so it stays tender.
- Veal gravy or broth
- Provides the liquid base and savoury depth for the stewed sauce.
- Bread crumbs
- Thicken the gravy slightly and give the sauce body.
- Arrowroot
- Thickens the sauce to a glossy, smooth consistency without clouding it.
- Sherry
- Adds acidity and aromatic depth to the sauce.
The step that matters
Boil the sauce gently after adding the arrowroot mixture. Arrowroot thickens when heated and then can thin if boiled too long or too hard, so the sauce should be brought to a boil only as the timed step directs and kept steady.
Swap the arrowroot
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, bread, anchovy, sauce, sherry, lemon, oyster):
- Shallotfits better
- Tomatofits better
- Capsicumfits better
- Arrowrootthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against veal, bread, anchovy, sauce, sherry, lemon, 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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