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To Stew Cod

A cod stew made with anchovies, butter, bread crumbs, lemon juice, spices, gravy, and crab or lobster sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper 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 ↓

To Stew Cod

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and stew

  1. Cut cod into slices.

  2. Place cod in a stewpan with enough water to cover it and stew for 15 minutes.

  3. Do not turn the fish in the pan.

Finish the sauce

  1. Add pounded anchovies, butter, fine bread crumbs, and lemon juice.

  2. Season with salt, nutmeg, white pepper, and Cayenne pepper.

  3. Add enough gravy to allow the mixture to boil for 5 minutes.

  4. For extra flavor, stir in 1 tablespoon of crab or lobster sauce.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  3. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  4. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  5. Butter + crabtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together812 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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, flaking into tender pieces as it stews.
Anchovies
Add salty, savory depth that enriches the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture to the sauce.
Fine bread crumbs
Thicken the liquid and give the sauce body.
Gravy
Supplies liquid and savory flavor for the sauce as it boils.

The step that matters

Do not turn the fish in the pan. Cod is delicate and flakes easily when stewed. Turning it breaks the slices apart, so they stay whole if left undisturbed while the liquid simmers.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, bread, lemon, nutmeg, pepper, crab):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Cinnamonfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, bread, lemon, nutmeg, pepper, crab. 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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