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Cod Pie

A pie of cod baked in a crust, served with a lemon and oyster sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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

  1. Lay the cod in salt for 4 hours.

  2. Wash the cod.

  3. Place the cod in a dish.

  4. Season the cod.

  5. Add the butter and stock.

  6. Cover the cod with the pie crust.

Bake

  1. Bake for 1 hour.

Make the sauce

  1. Mix the stock, cream or milk, and thickening for the sauce.

  2. Add the lemon peel and oysters to the sauce.

  3. Bring the sauce to a boil.

  4. Pour the sauce into the pie through a hole in the crust.

  5. Cover the pie with a small piece of pastry.

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 + macetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cod
Forms the flaky, tender main body of the pie filling.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour through the cod.
Cream or milk
Adds moisture and a smooth, creamy texture to the sauce.
Thickening (flour or butter)
Thickens the liquid so the sauce holds together rather than running off.
Oysters
Contribute a briny, savoury flavour to the sauce.
Stock
Provides liquid and savoury depth to the filling and sauce.

The step that matters

Bring the sauce to a boil.. Flour thickening only reaches full strength once the sauce boils, as starch granules swell and gelatinise. Undercooked sauce stays thin and can taste floury, so it should be boiled until it has visibly thickened.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Cinnamonfits better
  4. Macethe original

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