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Codfish Soup

A soup made from shredded codfish, water, butter, flour, milk, eggs, and bread dice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Codfish Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Boil the codfish in water for 20 minutes.

  2. Mix butter with flour and a little hot water until smooth.

  3. Add the butter mixture to the pot and bring to a boil.

  4. Stir in the milk and let it boil.

  5. Add the beaten eggs and stir well.

Serve

  1. Serve with bread dice or add a poached egg for each person in a 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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, 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
Provides the main flavour and savory body of the soup.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour through the broth.
Flour
Thickens the butter and liquid into a smooth, lightly body-rich base.
Milk
Adds creaminess and softness, mellowing the fish flavour.
Eggs
Set when stirred into hot liquid, giving the soup a silky, thickened texture.

The step that matters

Add the beaten eggs and stir well. Eggs set when they meet hot liquid. Stirring them in steadily spreads them into fine strands rather than cooked lumps, keeping 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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