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Creamed Codfish

A creamy codfish dish made with milk, flour, butter, and optional egg.

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

Creamed Codfish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare the codfish as directed in previous recipes, omitting the potatoes.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine the milk and flour, mixing until smooth.

  2. Add the butter and beaten egg, if using, to the saucepan.

  3. Cook the mixture over low heat for a few minutes, stirring until thickened.

Serve

  1. Serve hot.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 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).

Flour and butter 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

Milk
Forms the liquid base of the cream sauce that thickens around the fish.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth sauce as its starch swells with heat.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the sauce a smooth, rounded texture.
Egg
Optional; adds richness and helps thicken the sauce as it heats.
Prepared codfish
Provides the main flavour and body of the dish.

The step that matters

Cooking the sauce over low heat. Flour thickens milk only when it heats enough for its starch to swell, but high heat or long cooking can scorch the milk and make it grainy. Low heat with steady stirring gives a smooth result. If egg is added, too much heat can curdle it.

“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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