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Milk or Cream Codfish

A codfish dish simmered in milk or cream with butter, pepper, and thickened with flour or cornstarch, served over toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Milk or Cream Codfish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the codfish

  1. Soak the salt codfish in cold water and bring to a boil.

  2. Drain the water and repeat if the fish is very salty.

  3. Let the fish dry, then pour over it the milk or cream.

Make the codfish in milk

  1. Add butter and pepper.

  2. Mix the flour or cornstarch with a little milk to make a thickening.

  3. Add the thickening to the fish mixture and bring to a boil.

  4. Serve over a slice of toasted bread.

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 + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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

Salt codfish
Provides the main savoury flavour and the flaky texture of the dish.
Milk or thin cream
Forms the liquid base that carries the fish and gives a soft, creamy body.
Flour or cornstarch
Thickens the milk so the mixture becomes creamy rather than watery.
Butter
Adds richness and a rounded, mellow flavour.

The step that matters

Drain and repeat the soaking if the fish is very salty. Salt codfish is cured in salt, so soaking and draining remove excess salt. Skipping this can leave the finished dish too salty to eat comfortably.

“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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