Name: Codfish in Cream
Ingredients: 1 cup salt codfish, cut into ¼ inch dice; 1 cup boiling water; ½ cup thin cream; Whole-wheat bread, for toast; Cayenne pepper, to taste

Why it works: Wheat and bread match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 209 recipes. Both carry 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline, which smells popcorn, roasted. The science ↓

Codfish in Cream

Ingredients

1 cup salt codfish, cut into ¼ inch dice
1 cup boiling water
½ cup thin cream
Whole-wheat bread, for toast
Cayenne pepper, to taste

Directions

Prepare the cod

Pour boiling water over the diced salt codfish and let it stand for 5 minutes.
Drain the fish and add it to the boiling cream.

Serve

Serve the mixture on toasted whole-wheat bread.
Add a speck of cayenne pepper for extra flavor.

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.

Wheat + breadtop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together209 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).
Wheat + peppertop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together984 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Bread + peppertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together20,964 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Cream + peppertop 23% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together21,449 recipes

Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).
Cream + wheattop 24% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together681 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

Cream and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 21,449 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 firm, flaky texture of the dish.
Thin cream: Adds richness and moisture, softening the fish into a creamy mixture.

“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.