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Baked Codfish

A baked codfish dish with potatoes, butter, milk, and eggs, finished with drawn butter sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Baked Codfish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Soak, boil, and pick the salt fish as you would for fish balls.

  2. Add an equal quantity of mashed potatoes or cold boiled chopped potatoes, ½ cup of butter, and enough warm milk to make it soft.

Assemble and bake

  1. Transfer the mixture to a buttered dish.

  2. Rub butter over the top.

  3. Sprinkle with sifted flour.

  4. Bake for about 30 minutes until it is a rich brown.

Finish and serve

  1. Prepare drawn butter.

  2. Add sliced hard-boiled eggs.

  3. Serve in a gravy boat.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Fish + milktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,432 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

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

Salt fish
Forms the main body of the dish and supplies its savoury, salty flavour.
Potatoes
Add bulk and a soft, starchy body that holds the fish together.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and helps the top brown in the oven.
Warm milk
Adds moisture and softens the mixture so it spreads and bakes evenly.
Flour
Sprinkled on top, it helps form a golden, browned crust during baking.

The step that matters

Bake until a rich brown. Browning comes from heat acting on the surface sugars and proteins, so the dish needs enough time in the oven. Pulling it too early leaves the top pale and soft, while baking too long can dry the mixture out.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, butter, milk, flour, egg):

  1. Potatothe original
  2. Asparagusfits about as well
  3. Leekfits about as well
  4. Chivefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, butter, milk, flour, egg. 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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