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Nantucket Cod-fish

A codfish dish from Nantucket made with milk, butter, pepper, flour, eggs, mashed potatoes, and mustard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Nantucket Cod-fish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cod

  1. Cut the thick part out of the codfish and soak it overnight.

  2. Cut the soaked fish into very small pieces and parboil for a few minutes, changing the water until the fish is only slightly salted.

  3. Drain the water and leave the fish in the saucepan.

Make the sauce

  1. Pour in enough milk to cover the fish and heat it.

  2. Add butter and pepper, then thicken with flour stirred smooth in milk, stirring constantly for a few minutes.

Make the dressing and serve

  1. For the dressing, take one-third of a large fish, soak it for 3 to 4 hours, then boil until thoroughly done.

  2. Pick the meat fine, removing all bones, and mix with chopped hard-boiled eggs and mashed potatoes in a stewpan.

  3. Add 1 teacup of hot water, salt, and mustard to taste, and boil for half an hour.

  4. Add a liberal supply of butter just before serving.

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. Potato + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,340 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Pepper + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

Codfish
Forms the flaky body of both the main fish and the dressing.
Milk
Makes the smooth, thickened sauce that coats the fish.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth sauce.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add richness and body to the fish dressing.
Potatoes
Add starch and bulk, making the dressing soft and creamy.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the sauce and finished dish.

The step that matters

Parboil and change the water when salting the cod. Dried cod is very salty, so soaking and repeatedly changing the water while parboiling removes salt. If the fish is not desalted enough, the finished dish will taste harsh, and the later addition of salt and mustard cannot be undone.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Mustardthe original

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