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Crimped Cod

Cod cooked with onions, tomatoes, garlic, paprika, milk, butter, and cornflour, served with boiled liver slices and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Crimped Cod

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cod

  1. Cut the cod into slices.

  2. In a fish kettle, place the cod in hot water with a large handful of coarse sea salt and steam gently for 10 to 15 minutes.

Make the sauce

  1. In a separate pan, melt the butter and fry the onions for 10 minutes.

  2. Add the chopped tomatoes, garlic, paprika, and cook for a few minutes.

  3. Slowly add the milk and 2 teaspoons of salt, then thicken with cornflour.

Combine and serve

  1. Add the steamed cod to the sauce and let it simmer for 20 minutes.

  2. Serve garnished with boiled liver slices and parsley, with oyster sauce or melted butter.

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. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Tomato + garlictop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,076 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  3. Garlic + parsleytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,308 recipes

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

  4. Clove + parsleytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

What each ingredient does

Cod
Forms the main body of the dish and becomes tender as it steams and simmers.
Onions
Softened by frying in butter, they add sweetness and a savoury base to the sauce.
Milk
Forms the creamy base of the sauce that coats the fish.
Cornflour
Thickens the milk into a smooth sauce that clings to the cod.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and moisture that balance the richness of the milk.

The step that matters

Thickening the milk with cornflour. Cornflour must be stirred into the liquid so it disperses evenly; added in clumps it stays lumpy. Starch thickens properly only once the sauce is hot enough to gelatinise it, so the sauce should be brought fully to heat before serving.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, onion, tomato, garlic, milk, liver, parsley):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Cuminfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, onion, tomato, garlic, milk, liver, parsley. 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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