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Milk Stew

A stew of milk, potatoes, codfish, and butter, seasoned with salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓

Milk Stew

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the codfish in lukewarm water until soft and the salt is removed.

  2. Cook the potatoes in water until tender, then drain them.

Make the stew

  1. Add the milk and codfish to the potatoes and bring to a boil.

  2. Stir in the butter and add salt to taste.

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

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

  2. Milk + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

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

  3. Butter + potatotop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Milk
Forms the liquid base of the stew and gives it a creamy, mild body.
Potatoes
Add starch and bulk, thickening the broth slightly and giving the stew substance.
Codfish
Provides the main savory flavor and protein of the stew.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel to the finished stew.

The step that matters

Soaking the codfish. Codfish is salted, so it must soak until soft and the excess salt is removed. If skipped, the stew will taste overly salty and the fish will stay tough.

“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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