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Creamed Codfish

A creamy codfish dish with butter, milk, egg, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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. Wash the shredded codfish in 2-3 waters and squeeze dry.

Make the creamed codfish

  1. Melt the butter in a frying pan over medium heat.

  2. Stir in the codfish and add the milk or cream.

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

Serve

  1. Pour onto a platter and sprinkle with chopped hard boiled eggs and parsley.

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 + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

  5. Egg + parsleytop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,765 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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 flaky texture and savory flavor.
Milk or cream
Adds moisture and richness, creating a creamy, smooth sauce around the fish.
Egg
Sets with gentle heat to thicken the mixture and bind it together.
Butter
Adds fat and flavor, helping the codfish cook gently in the pan.

The step that matters

Stirring the beaten egg in off the heat. Egg proteins set when heated, so adding it to a boiling mixture can scramble it into lumps. Removing the pan from heat first lets the egg thicken the cream smoothly.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, milk, egg):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Parsleythe original
  4. Tarragonfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, milk, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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