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Muk or Cream Codfish

A codfish dish simmered in milk or cream, thickened with flour or cornstarch, served over toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Muk or Cream Codfish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the codfish

  1. Soak the salt codfish in cold water, bring it to a boil, then drain and repeat if very salty.

  2. Let the codfish dry, then pour the milk or cream over it.

Make the cream

  1. Add the butter and pepper.

  2. Mix the flour or cornstarch with a little milk, then add to the mixture.

  3. Cook until it thickens, then serve over a slice of toasted bread.

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. Milk + buttertop 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. 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

Salt codfish
Provides the main savory flavor and the flaky body of the dish.
Milk or thin cream
Forms the liquid base that becomes a creamy sauce when heated.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the sauce a smoother mouthfeel.
Flour or cornstarch
Thickens the liquid as it cooks, so the mixture becomes a creamy sauce.

The step that matters

Cook until it thickens. Flour or cornstarch thickens only when heated enough for its starch granules to swell and gelatinize. Stopping too early leaves a thin, watery sauce, while cooking too long can make it gluey.

“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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