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Codfish Steak.

A New England codfish steak fried in rendered pork fat and served with buttered Johnny cake.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Codfish Steak.

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Cut the codfish into steaks about 1.5 inches thick.

  2. Sprinkle coarse sea salt over the steaks and let them sit for 2 hours.

  3. Dice the salt fat pork.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry the diced pork in a pan until all the fat is rendered, then remove the crisp bits.

  2. Dredge the codfish steaks in cornmeal.

  3. Heat the pork fat until smoking hot.

  4. Fry the codfish steaks in the hot fat until dark brown on both sides.

  5. Squeeze lemon juice over the steaks.

  6. Add freshly ground pepper.

  7. Serve with hot, well-buttered Johnny Cake.

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. Pork + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,933 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  3. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

  4. Pork + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,121 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Codfish
Forms the main body of the dish, cooking into flaky, tender steaks.
Salt fat pork
Renders fat for frying the fish and leaves crisp bits that add savory crunch.
Cornmeal
Forms a crisp, browned coating on the fish steaks during frying.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, fried flavor of the fish.

The step that matters

Frying the codfish in smoking hot pork fat. If the fat is not hot enough, the cornmeal coating absorbs fat and turns greasy instead of forming a crisp, dark brown crust. Fully heating the fat sears the coating quickly while the fish cooks through.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, pepper, butter):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Mangofits about as well
  3. Plumfits less well
  4. Avocadofits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, pepper, butter. 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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