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Codfish on Toast

A codfish mixture simmered with milk, butter, pepper, and flour, served over buttered 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 ↓

Codfish on Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the codfish

  1. Soak the shredded codfish in cold water in a skillet and bring to a boil.

  2. Drain the codfish in a colander, then return it to the skillet with a little cold milk.

Season and thicken

  1. Season the codfish with butter and pepper.

  2. Stir in 1 tablespoon of flour mixed with a little cold milk and let it boil for a moment.

Serve

  1. Serve the mixture on buttered toast on a platter.

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 + flourtop 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. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

Shredded codfish
Provides the main body and savory flavor of the dish.
Flour
Thickens the milk mixture into a creamy sauce when it boils.
Milk
Adds moisture and creaminess, combining with the flour to form a smooth sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavor through the codfish.

The step that matters

Stir in the flour mixture and boil briefly. Flour must be fully mixed with cold milk before adding, so it disperses without lumps. Boiling then activates the starch so the sauce thickens properly.

“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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