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Boiled Cod with Cream Sauce

A boiled cod fillet served with a butter‑flour‑cream sauce seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Boiled Cod with Cream Sauce

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the fish

  1. Clean the codfish carefully and place it in a kettle with salted cold water.

  2. Boil the fish quickly at first, then reduce to a slow boil until done.

  3. Remove the fish from the water and take off the skin.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter and stir in the flour until browned.

  2. Add the cream, salt, and pepper, and bring to a gentle boil.

  3. Serve the sauce with the boiled fish.

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

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

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + creamtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  5. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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
Provides the main protein, which firms and turns opaque as it cooks in simmering water.
Butter
Carries flavour and richness into the sauce and helps form the roux base.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when cooked with butter into a roux.
Cream
Adds richness and body, thickening the sauce as it heats.

The step that matters

Stirring the butter and flour until browned. Cooking the flour in melted butter makes a roux. If it is stirred too little or heated too hard, it can scorch or clump, leaving a bitter taste or lumpy sauce. Keep the heat moderate and stir constantly.

“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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