Skip to main content
Main

Stewed Codfish

A stew of codfish simmered with water, eggs, butter, pepper, salt, flour, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Stewed Codfish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the codfish

  1. Soak the codfish well.

  2. Pick the codfish into pieces and add to the skillet.

Stew

  1. In a skillet, bring 1 pint of water to a simmer.

  2. Break 2 eggs into the skillet.

  3. Season with butter, pepper, and salt.

  4. In a separate bowl, mix flour and milk to create a thickening.

  5. Add the thickening to the skillet and stew until thickened.

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. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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 main body and flavour of the dish.
Eggs
Set during stewing to add richness and body to the liquid.
Flour
Thickens the liquid when mixed with milk and stirred in.
Milk
Combines with flour to form a smooth, thickening base that adds creaminess.
Butter
Adds fat, richness, and a smooth mouthfeel to the stew.

The step that matters

Adding the flour and milk thickening. Flour mixed into cold milk can clump, and it must be whisked smooth before going into the simmering liquid. Stirring as it goes in helps the starch disperse evenly and thicken without lumps.

“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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes