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Creamed Codfish

A creamy codfish dish made with butter, cream, milk, egg, pepper, and salt.

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 cod

  1. Remove the skin and bones from the boiled cod and flake the fish.

Make the creamed cod

  1. In a saucepan, combine the cod, butter, pepper, and salt over medium heat until hot.

  2. Add the cream and milk, stirring to combine.

  3. Thicken the mixture slightly, then remove from heat.

  4. Stir in the egg and serve immediately.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Cream + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

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

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

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Cod
Provides the flaky fish that forms the body of the dish.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the sauce.
Cream
Adds richness and body, helping the mixture thicken gently.
Milk
Thins the cream base to a pourable, creamy consistency.
Egg
Thickens the mixture further when stirred in off the heat.

The step that matters

Stir in the egg off the heat. Egg proteins set when heated, so adding the egg after removing the pan from the heat thickens the sauce smoothly. If the pan is still hot, the egg can scramble and leave the texture grainy.

“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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