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Codfish for Breakfast

A baked codfish dish served with butter, cream, flour, pepper, egg, and toasted garnish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Codfish for Breakfast

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the fish

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Heat the codfish in the oven to make it easier to pick apart, then remove all bones.

  3. Place the fish in a frying pan covered with cold water and heat gradually for 10 minutes.

  4. Drain the fish, then add pepper, butter, and cream, reserving 2 tablespoons of cream for the flour.

Make the sauce

  1. Gradually mix the flour into the reserved cream until smooth.

  2. When the cream simmers, add the flour mixture and boil for 2-3 minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Stir in the well-beaten egg and serve immediately.

  2. Garnish with pieces of dry toast.

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

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

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 flavor of the dish.
Flour
Thickens the cream into a smooth sauce that holds the fish.
Egg
Sets with heat and adds richness and body to the sauce.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth mouthfeel.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, forming the base of the sauce.

The step that matters

Stir in the well-beaten egg and serve immediately. Egg proteins set when heated, so it should be added off the heat or at a gentle simmer and served right away. Boiling after adding the egg can cause it to curdle and turn grainy, and the sauce thickens further as it sits.

“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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