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Codfish in Cream

Codfish cooked in a butter‑flour‑milk‑cream sauce with egg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Codfish in Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cod

  1. Soak the codfish in boiling water for a few minutes.

  2. Drain the codfish and set aside.

Make the cream sauce

  1. Heat the milk in a saucepan.

  2. Save ½ cup of the milk for later.

  3. Melt the butter in the hot milk.

  4. Whisk in the flour until smooth.

  5. Beat the egg.

  6. Mix the beaten egg with the reserved cold milk.

  7. Stir this mixture into the saucepan.

  8. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  9. Add the drained codfish.

  10. Cook slowly for 5 minutes.

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. Cream + buttertop 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. Flour + eggtop 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

Codfish
Forms the main body of the dish, flaked into the sauce as the protein.
Flour
Thickens the milk mixture so the sauce becomes smooth and coats the fish.
Egg
Adds richness and helps thicken the sauce when gently heated.
Butter
Adds fat and flavour to the milk base.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the cream sauce.

The step that matters

Stir the egg mixture in and bring to a boil. The egg must be tempered with cold milk before entering the hot sauce, or it can scramble. Once combined, gentle heat thickens the egg proteins smoothly, so the sauce should be stirred steadily rather than left to catch on the bottom.

“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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