Skip to main content
Main

Codfish Stewed

A stew of codfish simmered with milk, butter, and thickened with flour or corn starch, finished with beaten egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Codfish Stewed

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Soak the codfish in cold water for several hours.

  2. Pick the fish finely.

  3. Place the fish in a saucepan with cold water and boil for a few minutes.

  4. Pour off the water, add fresh cold water, boil again, and drain.

Make the sauce

  1. Add sweet milk and butter.

  2. Thicken with flour or corn starch and stir well.

  3. Remove from heat.

  4. Add the beaten egg yolks and stir again.

Serve

  1. Pour into a hot dish and serve.

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 + flourtop 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. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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
Forms the main body of the dish, providing its flaky texture and savory flavor.
Sweet milk
Adds moisture and creaminess, forming the base of the sauce.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the sauce.
Flour or corn starch
Thickens the milk mixture so it clings to the fish.
Egg yolks
Enriches and thickens the sauce, adding richness and a smooth texture.

The step that matters

Add the egg yolks off the heat. Egg yolks thicken by gentle heat and can scramble or curdle if they meet a boiling liquid. Removing the pan from the heat before adding them lets them thicken the sauce smoothly.

“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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes