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 ↓
Our Daily Bread
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Boil the potatoes for three to four hours until tender.
Remove the bones from the codfish and chop or mash it finely.
Drain the water from the potatoes and mash them.
Make the mixture
Add the codfish, butter, and sweet milk to the mashed potatoes and stir well.
Bake and serve
Transfer the mixture to a plate, smooth the top, and bake in the oven until browned.
Serve hot.
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.
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Butter + milktop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Potato + milktop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together3,611 recipes
Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).
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Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together6,456 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Potatoes
- Provide the starchy base that gives the bread its soft, mashable body.
- Codfish
- Adds savory, salty flavor and protein to the mashed potato base.
- Butter
- Adds fat for richer flavor and a softer, moister texture.
- Sweet milk
- Adds moisture and helps the mixture bind into a smooth, spreadable mass.
The step that matters
Bake until browned. Baking until the top browns builds surface flavor through the Maillard reaction, while the interior stays moist. Stopping too early leaves the bread pale and bland.
“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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