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Boiled Codfish and Oyster Sauce

A boiled codfish served with a sauce made from oysters, butter, milk, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 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 ↓

Boiled Codfish and Oyster Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Soak the fish in cold salted water for 30 minutes before cooking.

  2. Roll the fish in a clean cloth dredged with flour and sew the edges to fully envelope the fish.

  3. Place the fish in boiling salted water with whole cloves, peppercorns, and lemon peel.

Cook and serve the fish

  1. Gently pull on the fins; the fish is done when the fins come out easily.

  2. Arrange the fish on a folded napkin and serve with oyster sauce.

Make the oyster sauce

  1. Scald the oysters in hot oyster liquor, then remove them.

  2. Add salt, pepper, mace, and butter to the liquor.

  3. Whisk in milk mixed with flour, then simmer briefly.

  4. Add the oysters and serve in a sauceboat.

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. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Oyster + fishtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together496 recipes

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

  5. Clove + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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 until it turns opaque and flakes easily.
Oysters
Add a briny, savoury flavour to the sauce, which is built on their liquor.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel to the sauce.
Milk
Adds body and creaminess to the sauce, giving it a mild sweetness.
Flour
Thickens the milk and liquor into a sauce when whisked in and heated.

The step that matters

Whisking the milk and flour into the liquor. Flour lumps if it is added without being fully mixed into the milk first and whisked into the hot liquor. Simmering briefly cooks the starch so the sauce thickens smoothly and loses its raw floury taste.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, clove, lemon, oyster, fish, pepper, butter):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, clove, lemon, oyster, fish, 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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