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Creamed Codfish

A codfish dish cooked with butter, flour, milk, and cream, served on buttered toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 codfish

  1. Soak the codfish overnight.

  2. In the morning, shred the codfish.

Make the cream sauce

  1. In a saucepan, rub together the butter and flour.

  2. Gradually add the heated milk and cream, stirring until smooth.

Combine and serve

  1. Add the shredded codfish and mix well.

  2. Serve immediately on buttered 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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

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

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 salty, flaky fish that forms the main body of the dish.
Butter
Adds richness and flavor, and with flour forms the base of the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the milk and cream into a smooth, creamy sauce when cooked with butter.
Milk
Forms the liquid of the sauce, giving it a smooth, creamy body.
Cream
Adds richness and body to the sauce, making it smoother and more luxurious.

The step that matters

Gradually add the heated milk and cream, stirring until smooth. Adding liquid slowly while stirring keeps the flour from clumping, so the sauce thickens evenly into a smooth base instead of lumps.

“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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