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Cod Steaks

Cod steaks are fried cod slices coated in flour and served with lemon butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon 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 ↓

Cod Steaks

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Wash and thoroughly dry the cod slices.

  2. Mix the flour, salt, and pepper in a bowl.

  3. Coat the fish completely with the flour mixture.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat a good layer of frying fat in a frying pan.

  2. Fry the fish until crisp and well browned on both sides.

  3. Melt the butter and mix it with the lemon juice.

  4. Serve the fish with the lemon butter, or simply with oiled butter.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

  4. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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, cooking to a flaky texture once fried.
Flour
Forms a coating that crisps and browns in the hot fat.
Butter
Adds richness and flavour to the finished serving sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich butter.

The step that matters

Fry the fish until crisp and well browned on both sides. The fish must be thoroughly dry and the fat hot enough, otherwise the coating steams instead of browning and sticks. Drying removes surface water that would prevent crisping.

“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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