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Creamed Codfish on Toast

Creamed codfish 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 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 ↓

Creamed Codfish on Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Cook the codfish until tender, then flake it into pieces.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt butter and stir in flour to make a roux.

  2. Gradually add milk, stirring until the mixture thickens.

  3. Season with salt and pepper, then add the flaked codfish.

Serve

  1. Serve the creamed codfish over slices of toast.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

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

Codfish
Provides the flaked body and mild flavour that the sauce carries.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and forms the base of the roux.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as its starch swells in the hot butter and milk.
Milk
Forms the liquid of the sauce, which thickens as the starch sets.
Toast
Gives a crisp base that holds the creamed sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the milk gradually. Pouring milk in slowly while stirring lets the flour disperse evenly in the roux. Added all at once, the starch clumps into lumps that stay in the finished 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.

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