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Fresh Cod-fish

Fresh cod fish boiled, fried, or stewed with salt, pepper, wine, lemon, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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

Poach the cod

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

Fry and season

  1. Coat the cod pieces in flour, sprinkle with cayenne pepper, and fry until brown.

  2. Season with black pepper and salt, then add a little white wine and lemon juice, or a sauce made with butter and flour.

Serve

  1. Serve with melted butter and your choice of 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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Butter + white winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. White wine + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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
Is the main protein, turning flaky and firm as it cooks through.
Flour
Forms a coating that browns and crisps in the hot fat.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carried into the serving sauce.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma to the seasoning liquid.
Lemon
Adds bright acidity that balances the rich fried coating.

The step that matters

Frying the floured cod until brown. Flour browns quickly in hot fat, so the pieces can scorch before the fish is cooked through. Moderate heat lets the coating colour evenly while the flesh stays moist.

“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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