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Milk or Cream Codfish

A codfish dish simmered in milk or cream with butter, pepper, and a thickening of flour or cornstarch, served over toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Milk or Cream Codfish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the codfish

  1. Boil the salt codfish in a basin covered with cold water to freshen it.

  2. Turn off the water; if the fish is very salty, repeat the boiling.

  3. Drain the fish and let it dry.

Make the sauce

  1. Pour the milk or cream over the codfish.

  2. Add butter and pepper.

  3. Mix the flour or cornstarch with a little milk to make a thickening.

  4. Add the thickening to the codfish mixture.

  5. Bring the mixture to a boil.

Serve

  1. Serve over a slice of dipped toast.

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 + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + flourtop 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 savory flavor and salty, flaky texture of the dish.
Milk or thin cream
Forms the liquid base that carries the fish and gives the dish its creamy body.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that softens the flavor and mouthfeel of the sauce.
Flour or cornstarch
Thickens the milk as it heats, giving the sauce body.

The step that matters

Freshening the salt codfish. Salt cod must be soaked and boiled to draw out excess salt. Skipping or shortening this leaves the dish overly salty, since the fish is the main seasoning and cannot be diluted once the sauce is made.

“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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