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Creamed Codfish

A creamy cod dish made with butter, cream, milk, egg, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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

Prepare the cod

  1. Remove the skin and bones from the boiled cod and flake the fish.

Make the creamed cod

  1. In a saucepan, combine the cod, butter, pepper, and salt.

  2. Heat the mixture until hot, then add the cream and milk.

  3. Thicken slightly, then remove from heat and stir in the egg.

  4. Serve immediately.

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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 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

Cod
Provides the main flesh, flaked so it blends into the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavour through the sauce.
Cream
Adds richness and body, giving the sauce a smooth, velvety texture.
Milk
Thins the cream base and adds moisture for a looser, pourable sauce.
Egg
Stirred in off the heat, it enriches and helps bind the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the liquid so the mixture becomes a spoonable, creamy sauce.

The step that matters

Stir in the egg off the heat. Egg proteins set when heated, so adding it to a boiling mixture can curdle it. Removing the pan from the heat first lets the egg enrich the sauce smoothly.

“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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