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Creamed Codfish

A creamy cod dish made with milk, flour, butter, and egg, served on toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Creamed Codfish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Soak the codfish overnight or wash off the salt and cover with cold water.

  2. In the morning, tear the fish into flakes without cutting it.

  3. Cover the fish with fresh water.

  4. Bring the water to a boil, but do not let the fish boil.

  5. Drain the fish.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt butter and flour together until smooth.

  2. Gradually add the hot milk while stirring continuously until thickened.

  3. Season with salt and pepper.

  4. Mix in a beaten egg just before adding the fish.

  5. Add the fish to the sauce and cook for 1 minute.

Serve

  1. Serve the creamed fish on buttered toast if preferred.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + eggtop 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).

Flour and butter 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
Forms the main body of the dish and gives it its flaky texture.
Butter
Enriches the sauce and adds richness and flavour to the base.
Flour
Thickens the melted butter into a roux that gives the sauce body.
Milk
Forms the liquid of the sauce, which thickens as it heats with the roux.
Egg
Adds richness and helps bind and thicken the sauce slightly.

The step that matters

Add the egg before the fish, and keep the fish from boiling. Egg proteins set with heat and can scramble if the sauce is too hot, so it is mixed in off the heat before the fish. Boiling the fish toughens its proteins and makes it dry and rubbery, so it is only brought to a boil in water and then drained.

“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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