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An Excellent Mode of Cooking Salt Fish

A method for cooking salted fish by boiling, shredding, and frying it with optional seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,259 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

An Excellent Mode of Cooking Salt Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Boil the salt fish until well cooked.

  2. Tear the fish into small shreds using two forks.

Fry

  1. Heat a skillet and add a little dripping or fat.

  2. Fry the shredded fish in the skillet until dry and crisp.

  3. If desired, add pepper, mustard, or small pieces of onion while frying.

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. Mustard + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Fish + meattop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together479 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Meat + mustardtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together855 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Salt fish
Provides the main body of the dish, which becomes dry and crisp when fried.
Dripping or fat
Conducts heat in the skillet and helps the shredded fish brown and crisp.

The step that matters

Frying the shredded fish until dry and crisp. Fish holds a lot of water after boiling. Frying over steady heat lets that moisture evaporate, so the shreds crisp instead of steaming and turning soggy.

Swap the mustard

The recipe marks mustard as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, meat, pepper, onion):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits about as well
  3. Mustardthe original
  4. Tomatofits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, meat, pepper, onion. 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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