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How to Cook Cod-fish

A method for preparing cod fish with milk, cream, flour, and butter.

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 ↓

How to Cook Cod-fish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Remove skin and bones from the cod fish and cut it into fine pieces.

  2. Soak the fish in cold water overnight, or in lukewarm water for 1–2 hours if needed for dinner.

  3. Drain the water and place the fish in a stew pan, covering it with enough cream or milk.

  4. Soak the thickest part of the fish in sweet skimmed milk for two days, changing the milk twice.

Cook

  1. Bring to a boil and thicken with flour.

  2. Add butter if using milk.

  3. Roll the fish in flour and fry until golden brown.

  4. Scald a teacup of thick sweet cream without boiling and pour it over the fish.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Fish + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Fish + milktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,432 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

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

Cod fish
Provides the main body of the dish, becoming tender and flaky when cooked.
Sweet skimmed milk
Softens the fish during soaking and adds a mild, creamy liquid for the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the liquid and forms a golden crust when the fish is fried.
Butter
Adds richness and flavour to the sauce.
Thick sweet cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety texture poured over the fish.

The step that matters

Scald the cream without boiling. Boiling thick cream can cause it to separate and turn grainy or oily, so it should be heated just until steaming and poured over the fish while still hot.

“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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