Name: Salt Codfish in Milk
Ingredients: ½ pound salt codfish; 2 tablespoons wheat germ meal; milk

Why it works: Wheat and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,418 recipes. Both carry (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, melon. The science ↓

Salt Codfish in Milk

Ingredients

½ pound salt codfish
2 tablespoons wheat germ meal
milk

Directions

Prepare

Soak the salt codfish in water overnight.

Cook

Place the soaked fish in an earthen dish and cover it with milk. Add the wheat germ meal.
Cook for 5 hours in an Aladdin Pail.

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.

Wheat + milktop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,418 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Salt codfish: Forms the main body of the dish, providing savory flavor and a firm, flaky texture.
Wheat germ meal: Adds a toasty, nutty flavor and some body to the milk as it cooks.
Milk: Surrounds the fish and cooks slowly into a soft, creamy sauce.

“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.