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Codfish Stew

A simple codfish stew made with water, milk, flour, egg, and butter, served with baked potatoes.

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 Stew

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cod

  1. In a stewpan, combine codfish and cold water, covering well.

  2. Bring to a boil, then drain the water.

Make the stew

  1. Add milk according to family size (1 pint or 1 quart).

  2. Heat until hot, then thicken with flour mixed with cold milk or water.

  3. Stir in a beaten egg rapidly at the end.

  4. Season with butter and serve with baked potatoes.

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. Milk + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + potatotop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

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

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Codfish
Forms the main body of the stew as flaky protein pieces.
Milk
Provides the liquid base and creamy body of the stew.
Flour
Thickens the milk as it heats, giving the stew body.
Egg
Enriches the stew and adds richness to the thickened liquid.

The step that matters

Stir in the beaten egg rapidly at the end. Egg proteins set when heated, so if the egg is added slowly or the stew is too hot, it can curdle into strands instead of blending smoothly into the liquid.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, flour, egg, butter):

  1. Chivefits about as well
  2. Potatothe original
  3. Leekfits about as well
  4. Asparagusfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, flour, egg, butter. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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