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Creamed Codfish

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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

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

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

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

Thicken and serve

  1. In a separate bowl, mix the flour with a cup of cold cream.

  2. When the mixture in the saucepan is about to boil, add the flour mixture and stir until thickened.

  3. Remove from heat and stir in the egg.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 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

Flour
Thickens the cream and milk into a smooth, creamy sauce when stirred near boiling.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavor through the fish and sauce.
Cream
Adds richness and body, giving the sauce a thick, smooth texture.
Egg
Enriches the sauce with added richness and body when stirred in off the heat.

The step that matters

Adding the flour mixture near boiling. Flour thickens only when its starch is heated in liquid, but adding it to a fully boiling or lumpy mixture can clump it. Adding it as the liquid nears a boil, while stirring, lets it disperse and thicken evenly.

“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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