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Codfish Custard

A custard made by cooking codfish with flour, milk, and egg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Codfish Custard

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Soak the codfish in cold water until nearly fresh.

  2. Place the fish in a saucepan and add boiling water.

  3. Scald the fish (do not boil), then pour off the water.

Make the custard

  1. In a bowl, mix the flour with the sweet milk little by little to prevent lumps.

  2. Pour the milk mixture over the fish and boil just long enough to thicken.

  3. Add the unbeaten egg, stir quickly, and remove from heat immediately.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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 flavour and body of the custard as the dish's savoury base.
Flour
Thickens the milk as its starch swells when heated, giving the custard body.
Sweet milk
Forms the liquid base that the flour thickens into a smooth custard.
Egg
Adds richness and helps set the custard as its proteins firm with heat.

The step that matters

Add the egg and remove from heat immediately. Egg proteins set at high heat and can curdle or turn grainy if the custard keeps boiling. Stirring quickly and removing it from the heat right away keeps the texture smooth.

“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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