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Creamed Codfish

A codfish cooked in a creamy sauce made from butter, flour, milk, and optional egg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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

Make the sauce

  1. Heat 2 cups of milk in a double boiler, reserving ½ cup to mix with flour.

  2. Make a paste with the reserved milk and 4 tablespoons of flour, then add it to the heated milk and cook.

Prepare the codfish

  1. Soak 1 cup of codfish in cold water, then warm it slowly over low heat without letting it simmer.

  2. If the fish is very salty, change the soaking water.

Combine and serve

  1. Once the sauce is cooked, add it to the codfish and 2 tablespoons of butter.

  2. If desired, stir in a beaten egg, cook for 1 minute, and serve.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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 milk into a smooth sauce as its starch swells when heated.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, giving it body and moisture.
Codfish
Provides the main flavor and texture of the dish.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the finished sauce.
Egg
Optionally enriches the sauce and thickens slightly when gently cooked.

The step that matters

Make a smooth paste before adding the flour mixture to the hot milk. Flour clumps if added dry or unmixed to liquid. Mixing it into a paste with a little cold milk first lets the starch disperse evenly, so when the sauce cooks it thickens smoothly instead of lumping.

“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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