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Potatoes and Cod-liver

A dish of steamed potatoes topped with cod liver, served with anchovy sauce, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Anchovy and sauce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,057 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Potatoes and Cod-liver

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Steam

  1. Peel and steam the potatoes until tender.

  2. Cut the cod liver into four pieces and place it over the potatoes.

  3. Steam the potatoes again, allowing the liver oil to fall on them.

  4. Make incisions in the liver to extract remaining oil.

Serve

  1. Serve the liver with anchovy sauce and the potatoes mixed with the oil, salt, and pepper.

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. Anchovy + saucetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

  3. Liver + anchovytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together199 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanol (green, fruity).

  4. Potato + anchovytop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Anchovy + peppertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,232 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

Cod liver
Rich oil melts during steaming, moistening and flavouring the potatoes below.
Floury potatoes
Starchy flesh softens when steamed and soaks up the liver oil.
Anchovy sauce
Adds salty, savoury depth that balances the richness of the liver oil.

The step that matters

Steaming the liver a second time. Liver is delicate and turns tough and dry when cooked too hard or too long. Gentle steam lets the fat melt out and drip onto the potatoes without overcooking the flesh.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (liver, anchovy, sauce, pepper):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Tomatofits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against liver, anchovy, sauce, pepper. 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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