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Creamed Codfish or Codfish Gravy

A creamy codfish gravy made with salt cod, milk, flour, butter, pepper, and egg, served over potatoes.

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 or Codfish Gravy

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the codfish

  1. Cover the codfish with cold water in a stew pan. Heat until hot, then simmer for about 5 minutes.

  2. Drain and set aside.

Make the gravy

  1. In a separate pot, thicken the milk with flour over medium heat. Add butter and pepper.

  2. Stir in the codfish and bring to a boil.

  3. Remove from heat. Quickly stir in the beaten egg.

Serve

  1. Serve with baked or boiled potatoes.

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. Pepper + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Milk + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + potatotop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

Salt codfish
Provides the main savory flavor and the flaked texture of the gravy.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the flour thickens into a smooth gravy.
Flour
Thickens the milk as it heats, giving the gravy body.
Egg
Adds richness and gently sets into the gravy when stirred in off the heat.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother mouthfeel to the gravy.

The step that matters

Stir in the beaten egg off the heat. Egg proteins set when hot, so adding it quickly off the heat, after the gravy is removed from the burner, helps it blend smoothly instead of curdling or turning grainy.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Capsicumfits about as well
  2. Potatothe original
  3. Asparagusfits about as well
  4. Chivefits about as well

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

“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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