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Fresh Cod-fish

A boiled, fried, or stewed cod fish served with butter or sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Fresh Cod-fish

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the cod

  1. Place the cod in a kettle of cold water with coarse sea salt and saltpetre. Cook thoroughly.

  2. Serve with melted butter and your choice of sauce.

Fry and finish

  1. Flour the pieces, sprinkle with cayenne pepper, and fry until brown.

  2. Season with pepper and salt.

  3. Add wine, lemon juice, and a sauce made with butter rolled in flour.

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. Fish + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 recipes

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Wine + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,157 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

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

Butter and flour 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
Provides the main body, which firms and flakes as it cooks.
Flour
Forms a coating that browns in the pan and helps the outside stay crisp.
Butter
Adds richness and flavour, and gives the sauce body when rolled in flour.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich butter and the fried coating.
Wine
Adds acidity and aroma to the pan liquids and sauce.

The step that matters

Frying the floured pieces until brown. The flour coating browns through the Maillard reaction, which needs the pan to be hot enough. If the fat is too cool, the coating soaks up oil and turns greasy, and if it is left too long, the fish dries out.

“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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