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Stewed Salt Cod

A simple stew of cod, butter, flour, and milk, seasoned with pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Stewed Salt Cod

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cod

  1. Scald the soaked cod by boiling it in water for 10 minutes.

  2. Scrape the cod to remove skin and bones, then flake it.

Stew

  1. In a stew pan, combine the flaked cod with butter and flour.

  2. Add enough milk to moisten the mixture.

  3. Stew gently for 10 minutes.

  4. Season with pepper to taste.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 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

Soaked cod
Provides the main protein and flaky body of the stew.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavour through the stew.
Flour
Thickens the liquid so the stew holds together rather than running thin.
Milk
Moistens the mixture and forms the creamy liquid of the stew.

The step that matters

Add enough milk to moisten the mixture. Flour thickens only when it is evenly hydrated with liquid. Adding too little milk leaves dry, pasty lumps, while adding it gradually keeps the flour smooth and the texture even.

“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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