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Breakfast Codfish

A codfish breakfast dish simmered in milk, flour, butter, and egg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Breakfast Codfish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the codfish

  1. Soak the codfish in cold water for 1 hour or overnight.

  2. Pick the codfish into small pieces, removing any bones.

  3. Cover the codfish with cold water and heat slowly to boiling.

  4. Drain the water carefully and add 2 cups of milk, heating slowly.

Make the sauce

  1. When it begins to boil, add butter and flour mixed with ½ cup of milk.

  2. Let it boil, then stir in the beaten egg and remove from heat.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 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 flesh and savory flavor of the dish.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that carries the codfish and thickens with the flour.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth, lightly bound sauce.
Egg
Adds richness and helps bind the mixture as it sets slightly on heat.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the flour mixture to the boiling milk. Flour thickens best when it is mixed smoothly with cold liquid first and then added to hot liquid while stirring. Adding it dry or in lumps can leave clumps that do not dissolve evenly.

“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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