Name: Milk or Cream Codfish
Ingredients: ½ cup milk or thin cream; 1 tablespoon salt codfish, finely chopped; 1 tablespoon butter; ¼ teaspoon pepper; 1 teaspoon flour or cornstarch; additional milk for thickening; 1 slice of bread for toast

Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Milk or Cream Codfish

Ingredients

½ cup milk or thin cream
1 tablespoon salt codfish, finely chopped
1 tablespoon butter
¼ teaspoon pepper
1 teaspoon flour or cornstarch
additional milk for thickening
1 slice of bread for toast

Directions

Prepare the codfish

Freshen the salt codfish by boiling it in cold water, then draining and repeating if very salty.
Pour ½ cup of milk or thin cream over the codfish.
Add butter and pepper.

Make and serve

Mix 1 teaspoon of flour or cornstarch with a little milk to make a thickening.
Add the thickening to the codfish mixture and bring to a boil.
Serve over a slice of dipped 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.

Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together11,466 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together78,219 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

Salt codfish: Provides the main savory flavor; freshening by boiling removes excess salt.
Milk or thin cream: Forms the liquid base that carries the flavor and becomes the sauce.
Butter: Adds richness and fat, giving the sauce a smoother mouthfeel.
Flour or cornstarch: Thickens the milk as it heats, giving the sauce body.

The step that matters

Bring the thickening to a boil. Flour or cornstarch must be heated to thicken the milk; starch granules swell and gelatinize only at near-boiling temperatures, so the mixture needs to reach a full boil to become smooth and thick.

“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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Milk or Cream Codfish