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Salt Codfish in Cream

A dish of soaked salt codfish mixed into a butter‑flour‑milk cream sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 ↓

Salt Codfish in Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Soak the cod

  1. Soak the salt codfish in water for 4 hours.

  2. Drain and soak in boiling water for 1 hour without boiling.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt ½ cup of butter.

  2. Stir in ½ cup of flour until combined.

  3. Gradually add 1 pint of boiling milk and bring to a boil.

  4. Strain the sauce and mix in the drained codfish.

Serve

  1. Serve hot.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Salt codfish
Provides the main flesh and savory flavor; soaking draws out its salt.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and carries flavor into the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as its starch swells in the hot butter and milk.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, giving it a creamy texture.

The step that matters

Gradually add the boiling milk. Adding the milk slowly while stirring keeps the flour evenly dispersed, so the starch thickens the sauce smoothly without lumps.

“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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