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Salt Fish, or Dun Fish

Salt fish is a salted whole fish prepared by soaking, boiling, and serving with pork scraps, boiled beets, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Fish and pork work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 668 recipes. Both carry 4-heptenal, which smells creamy, biscuit. The science ↓

Salt Fish, or Dun Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Soak and rinse

  1. Soak the whole fish in a fish kettle with 6-8 quarts of water overnight.

  2. The next morning, wash the fish and the kettle thoroughly.

  3. Place the fish back in the kettle with fresh water.

Poach the fish

  1. Heat the fish until scalding, but not boiling.

  2. One hour before serving, transfer the fish to a pan of cold water.

  3. Wash off the skin and fins.

  4. Wash the kettle again.

  5. Return the fish to the kettle.

  6. Add fresh water and boil for 30 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve the fish on a clean napkin on a fish dish with drawn butter and pork scraps.

  2. To make pork scraps, cut the fat salt pork into small pieces.

  3. Fry the pork pieces in a pan until the fat is rendered.

  4. Serve the scraps with boiled beets, which should be light brown.

  5. If not cooking a whole fish, cut it into 8-inch pieces.

  6. Garnish with hard-boiled eggs sliced and salt fish.

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. Fish + porktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together668 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  2. Fish + eggtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,782 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Pork + eggtop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,387 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Fish
Salted fish whose long soak draws out salt and firms the flesh for gentle poaching.
Fat salt pork
Rendered fat adds savoury flavour and crisp texture to the pork scraps.
Boiled beets
Add sweetness and colour alongside the rich, mild fish.

The step that matters

Heat the fish until scalding, but not boiling. Boiling makes delicate fish flesh tough and causes it to break apart. Holding the water just below boiling cooks the fish gently and evenly, keeping it moist and intact.

“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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