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Breakfast

Breakfast

A breakfast dish of salted codfish cooked in milk with butter and flour.

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 ↓

Breakfast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the codfish

  1. Soak the codfish in tepid water for 6 hours.

  2. Boil the soaked codfish until cooked, then let it cool.

  3. Flake the codfish with a fork and season with pepper.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. In a saucepan, heat the milk to a boil.

  2. Mix the butter and flour together, then stir into the boiling milk.

  3. Combine the milk mixture with the flaked codfish 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. Milk + buttertop 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. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

Salted codfish
Provides the main protein and flaked texture of the dish.
Milk
Forms the creamy liquid base that carries the codfish.
Prepared flour
Thickens the milk as its starch swells when heated.
Butter
Adds richness and smooth mouthfeel to the sauce.

The step that matters

Stirring the butter and flour into the boiling milk. Flour clumps if dropped in unevenly. Stirring while adding it spreads the starch so it thickens smoothly as it heats.

“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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