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Nantucket Soup

A codfish soup made with codfish, water, milk, butter, flour, pepper, and eggs.

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 ↓

Nantucket Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Boil the codfish slowly in the water for 15-20 minutes.

  2. Soften the butter with a little of the boiling water, then mix it until smooth with the flour and pepper.

  3. Add the mixture to the soup and boil for 1-2 minutes.

  4. Stir in the milk when it boils again.

Finish and serve

  1. Beat the eggs and stir them in just before serving.

  2. Serve with bread dice sprinkled on top.

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. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + eggtop 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 flavor and body of the soup.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded flavor.
Flour
Thickens the soup as it cooks with the butter.
Milk
Adds creaminess and a softer, richer body to the soup.
Eggs
Enrich and slightly thicken the soup as they set in the hot liquid.

The step that matters

Stirring in the beaten eggs. Eggs curdle into loose strands if they meet a fast boil or are added too early. Stirring them in just before serving, with the soup hot but not boiling, lets them thicken gently and keeps the texture smooth.

“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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