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To Boil Cod Fish

A boiled cod fish served with horse-radish, oyster sauce, melted butter, or anchovy sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Sauce and anchovy 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 ↓

To Boil Cod Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the cod fish and clean the inside, especially the backbone.

  2. Place the fish in a fish kettle and cover it with cold water mixed with salt and saltpetre.

Boil

  1. Bring to a boil over moderate heat, skimming off any scum.

  2. Boil gently until the fish is cooked: 20-30 minutes for medium size, 3-3.5 hours for large.

  3. Drain the fish.

Serve

  1. Serve on a very hot napkin, garnished with liver and roe.

  2. Add tufts of lightly scraped horse-radish around the edge.

  3. Serve with oyster sauce, melted butter, or anchovy 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. Sauce + anchovytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Horse + radishtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together529 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

  3. Oyster + anchovytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together603 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Fish + oystertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together496 recipes

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

  5. Fish + anchovytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together637 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Cod fish
Forms the main body of the dish, cooking into flaky, moist flesh.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the poaching water and firms the surface of the fish as it cooks.
Melted butter
Adds richness and fat to balance the mild, lean flesh of the fish.

The step that matters

Boil gently until the fish is cooked. Boiling vigorously breaks up delicate flakes and toughens the protein, so the water should only simmer. Cooking time depends strongly on size, so check for flakiness at the thickest part rather than relying only on the time range.

Swap the radish

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, horse, oyster, sauce, butter, anchovy):

  1. Shallotfits about as well
  2. Mustardfits about as well
  3. Radishthe original
  4. Horseradishfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, horse, oyster, sauce, butter, anchovy. 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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