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 codfish
Soak the shredded codfish in cold water for 2 hours.
Drain and par-boil the codfish, then drain again.
Make the stew
Add enough sweet milk to cover the codfish.
Season with pepper, butter, and salt.
Bring the milk to a boil.
Thicken the stew with flour or corn starch, boiling until it thickens.
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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Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together78,219 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together50,459 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked 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
- Shredded codfish
- Provides the main body and flaky texture of the stew.
- Sweet milk
- Forms the creamy liquid that the stew is cooked in.
- Flour or corn starch
- Thickens the milk as it boils, giving the stew body.
The step that matters
Thickening with flour or corn starch. Starch granules need to reach a boil to swell and thicken the milk. Adding the starch without boiling long enough leaves the stew thin, and letting it boil too hard or too long can cause it to scorch on the bottom of the pot.
“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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