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Codfish Toast

A toasted bread dish topped with salted codfish, milk, flour, and egg, simmered until heated.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Codfish Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the salt codfish overnight in cold water.

Make the sauce

  1. Thicken the milk slightly with flour in a saucepan.

  2. Add the beaten egg to the milk mixture and boil for 30 minutes.

  3. Stir in the soaked codfish and cook until heated through.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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 fish character of the dish.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the creamy sauce.
Flour
Thickens the milk so it becomes a smooth, body-rich sauce.
Egg
Adds richness and helps thicken the sauce as it cooks.

The step that matters

Add the beaten egg to the milk mixture. Eggs can curdle or scramble if the mixture is too hot or added without stirring. Adding the egg to a thickened milk base and stirring keeps it smooth and creamy.

“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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