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Creamed Codfish

A codfish dish cooked with milk, flour, eggs, and butter.

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 ↓

Creamed Codfish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Wash the codfish thoroughly in two or three waters.

Make the cream

  1. Add 1 cup warm water and bring to a boil.

  2. Slowly stir in the flour, rubbed to a smooth paste with part of the milk.

  3. Cook thoroughly, then add the rest of the milk.

  4. As soon as it boils, remove from the stove.

  5. Stir in the beaten eggs and the lump of butter.

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. Fish + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + fishtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,432 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  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
Provides the main body and flavour of the dish.
Flour
Thickens the liquid into a smooth, creamy sauce as it cooks.
Eggs
Enrich and thicken the sauce when stirred in off the heat.
Milk
Forms the creamy base of the sauce and adds richness.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the sauce.

The step that matters

Stirring in the eggs after removing from the heat. Eggs thicken by gently coagulating proteins. If the sauce is too hot when they go in, they can scramble and turn grainy, so they should be added off the heat.

“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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