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Salt Cod Fish

A cod fish dish with mashed potatoes, cream, butter, cayenne pepper, eggs, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Salt Cod Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cod

  1. Wash and soak the salt cod in fresh water overnight.

  2. Remove the cod from the water and take out all the bones.

Make the mixture

  1. Mash the boiled potatoes with a little cream until smooth.

  2. Mince the fish and mix it with the mashed potatoes and a piece of butter.

  3. Season with cayenne pepper and add coarse sea salt if needed.

  4. Chop the hard boiled eggs and add them to the mixture.

Heat and serve

  1. Heat the entire mixture in a saucepan before serving.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  2. Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

  3. Fish + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 recipes

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

  4. Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

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

  5. Fish + potatotop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together134 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Salt cod fish
Provides the main flesh and savory flavor of the dish.
Boiled potatoes
Give the mixture a soft, smooth body that binds the fish.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness to the mashed potatoes.
Butter
Adds fat for richer flavor and a smoother texture.
Hard boiled eggs
Add body and a firm, chopped texture to the mixture.

The step that matters

Soak the salt cod thoroughly. Salt cod is heavily preserved, so it must be soaked long enough to draw out excess salt. Without enough soaking, the finished dish will taste overly salty, and that salt cannot be removed once the fish is mixed in.

Swap the potato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, cream, 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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