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Codfish Stew

A stew of codfish pieces thickened with flour and milk, finished with butter and egg, served with baked potatoes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Codfish Stew

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Place codfish pieces in a stew pan and cover with cold water.

  2. Bring to a boil, then drain the water.

Make the stew

  1. Add 1 quart of milk and heat until hot.

  2. Mix ½ cup of flour with a little cold milk or water to make a smooth paste.

  3. Stir the paste into the stew to thicken.

  4. Add one egg, broken and stirred in rapidly, for extra richness.

  5. Season with 1 teaspoon of butter.

Serve

  1. Serve with baked potatoes.

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. Milk + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + potatotop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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
Forms the main body of the stew as the flesh flakes into the milk.
Flour
Thickens the milk as its starch swells with heat, giving the stew body.
Milk
Forms the creamy liquid base that carries the fish and thickens with the flour.
Egg (in the method)
Adds richness and helps enrich the thickened stew as it is stirred in.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour paste into the stew. Flour must be fully smoothed into cold liquid first; if added lumpy or dry, it clumps and does not thicken evenly. Stirring the paste in while the milk is hot lets the starch swell evenly.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Potatothe original
  2. Arrowrootfits about as well
  3. Leekfits less well
  4. Shallotfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, milk, butter. 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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