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Cod Soup

A soup made from cod fish, milk, butter, and thickening, served with crackers.

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

Cod Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Cut the cod fish into pieces.

  2. Put the fish into cold water and season with salt and pepper.

Cook the soup

  1. Boil for five minutes.

  2. Add 1 pint of milk, 2 tablespoons of butter, and a little thickening.

  3. Remove from heat after a few moments.

Serve

  1. Separate the flakes from the bones and serve.

  2. Serve with crackers dipped in milk or water in the tureen.

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

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

  2. Fish + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Fish + milktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,432 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  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

Cod fish
Provides the main protein and flaky texture of the soup.
Milk
Forms the creamy liquid base of the soup.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, rounding out the flavour of the milk.
Thickening (flour or cornstarch)
Thickens the milk so the soup becomes body-rich rather than watery.

The step that matters

Adding the milk and thickening after boiling. Milk can scorch or curdle when boiled hard, and starch thickens best when stirred into warm liquid rather than left to clump. Removing the pot from heat soon after adding them keeps the soup smooth.

“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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