Name: To Boil Codfish
Ingredients: codfish; cold water; potatoes; butter; cream or milk; pepper; flour; vinegar (optional)

Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

To Boil Codfish

Ingredients

Directions

Soak the codfish in cold water for 2 to 3 hours, or overnight for dinner.
Place the soaked codfish in a pot with cold water and cook slowly for 2 hours without boiling.
Serve the codfish with potatoes and a gravy made of drawn butter or egg sauce.
Optionally, chop the fish and potatoes together, adding vinegar to the sauce.
Alternatively, mash the potatoes and fish together, adding cream or milk, butter, and pepper.
Form the mixture into round flat cakes about 1 inch thick, dip in flour or egg and flour, and fry in butter.

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.

Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,305 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,456 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,814 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, cream, pepper, flour, vinegar):

Shallotfits about as well
Capsicumfits about as well
Mustardfits about as well
Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, cream, pepper, flour, vinegar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.