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Boiled Codfish

A boiled codfish dish cooked in milk with flour, eggs, butter, pepper, and coarse sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Boiled Codfish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Soak the codfish in cold water overnight to freshen it.

  2. An hour before dinner, drain the water and break the fish into pieces.

  3. Place the fish in a pan and cover it with cold water.

  4. Heat the pan on the stove until the water is scalding, but do not let it boil.

  5. Pour off the water and add enough milk to cover the fish.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Bring the milk to a boil and thicken it with 1 tablespoon of flour mixed in cold milk.

  2. Just before serving, add 2-3 eggs and a piece of butter the size of a small hen's egg.

  3. Season with pepper and coarse sea salt to taste.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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 protein; soaking freshens the salted fish and softens its firm texture.
Milk
Forms the creamy liquid that cooks the fish gently and becomes the sauce base.
Flour
Thickens the hot milk into a smooth, lightly body-filled sauce when mixed in cold milk first.
Eggs
Enrich the sauce and add richness and body as they set gently into it.
Butter
Adds fat and rich flavour that gives the sauce a silky mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Heating the water without boiling. Keeping the water just below boiling, as scalding, cooks the fish gently so it stays tender and in pieces rather than toughening and falling apart.

“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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