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Creamed Codfish with Poached Eggs

A creamy codfish sauce served over toast topped with poached eggs.

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

5 squares of toast

Ingredients

Directions

Make the codfish cream

  1. Put the codfish in a stewpan with enough boiling water to cover.

  2. Cook the codfish for 20 minutes.

  3. Drain the water.

  4. Add the boiled milk and cook for another 10 minutes.

  5. Thicken the mixture with the flour and butter.

  6. Add pepper and salt if necessary.

Poach and serve

  1. Prepare 5 moistened squares of toast on a hot platter.

  2. Spread the codfish mixture smoothly on the toast.

  3. In a frying pan, add boiling water and 5 muffin rings.

  4. Break each egg into a saucer and gently drop it into a ring.

  5. Cook the eggs for 3 minutes.

  6. Remove the eggs with a skimmer and place them on top of the codfish.

  7. Remove the rings.

  8. Sprinkle lightly with pepper and salt.

  9. 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. 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

Codfish
Forms the main body of the creamy filling once cooked and flaked into the milk.
Milk
Provides the liquid base that turns the codfish into a smooth, creamy mixture.
Flour
Thickens the milk mixture so it holds together on the toast.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the flour thicken the sauce smoothly.
Eggs
Set in boiling water to form soft, tender poached portions that top the codfish.

The step that matters

Poaching the eggs in the rings. Dropping the eggs gently into water that is already boiling keeps the whites together and the yolks soft. Lifting them out with a skimmer after about 3 minutes avoids overcooking.

“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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