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Boiled Codfish

A boiled codfish served with a sauce of butter, flour, milk, eggs, parsley, and capers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and capers match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,550 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Boiled Codfish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Soak the codfish in cold water with salt for 30 minutes.

  2. Wipe the fish dry and place it in a fish kettle with enough water to cover it.

  3. Bring the water to a brisk boil and cook for 30 minutes once boiling.

Make the sauce

  1. In a separate pot, combine boiling water and milk.

  2. Stir in butter gradually until melted, then add flour mixed with cold water.

  3. Once thickened, stir in beaten eggs, salt, and parsley.

  4. After boiling, remove from heat and add capers.

Serve

  1. Serve the fish on a hot dish and pour the sauce over it.

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. Parsley + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,550 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Flour + caperstop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,024 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 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

Codfish
Forms the main body of the dish, providing the flaky, mild protein that is served.
Butter
Enriches the sauce with fat, adding richness and a smooth mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the milk sauce as it cooks, giving it body.
Eggs
Beaten eggs set when stirred into the hot sauce, adding body and richness.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, adding creaminess and mild sweetness.

The step that matters

Stir in the beaten eggs. Eggs can curdle or scramble if added to a very hot sauce too quickly. Adding them off direct high heat, while stirring steadily, lets them thicken the sauce smoothly.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, butter, flour, egg, capers):

  1. Nutmegfits about as well
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Cinnamonfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, flour, egg, capers. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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