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Salt Codfish with Cheese

A creamy sauce of salted cod, butter, flour, paprika, milk, cheese, and egg.

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

Salt Codfish with Cheese

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the codfish

  1. Pick codfish into pieces.

  2. Soak in lukewarm water until soft, then drain.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add flour, then add paprika, and stir well.

  3. Gradually pour in milk and let it boil for 5-6 minutes.

Combine and finish

  1. Add the drained codfish and grated cheese, and stir until the cheese melts.

  2. Stir in the slightly beaten egg and mix well.

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 + cheesetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Milk + cheesetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,426 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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
Provides the main savoury flavour and body of the dish.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps form the base of the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the melted butter and milk into a smooth sauce.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, giving it creaminess once thickened.
Grated cheese
Melts into the sauce to add richness, flavour and body.
Egg
Adds structure and body to the mixture as it sets gently with heat.

The step that matters

Gradually pour in milk. Adding milk slowly to the butter and flour lets the starch mix in evenly, preventing lumps and giving a smooth sauce.

“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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