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Salt and Smoked Fish

A dish of salt cod simmered in milk with butter and corn starch, served with mashed potatoes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Corn and potato match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 938 recipes. Both carry (e)-2-octenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Salt and Smoked Fish

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cod

  1. Shred the salt cod finely and place it in a stewpan with cold water.

  2. Once the water is hot, pour it off, add more cold water, and boil the fish until done, about 15-20 minutes.

  3. Pour off the water.

Make the sauce

  1. Add 1½ pints of milk and a piece of butter to the fish.

  2. Mix 1 tablespoon of corn-starch with a little milk until smooth, then stir the corn-starch mixture into the boiling fish.

Serve

  1. Serve with mashed 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. Corn + potatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together938 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Salt cod
Provides the main flavor and the flaked fish texture of the dish.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce and adds creaminess and mild sweetness.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the sauce.
Corn-starch
Thickens the milk as it heats, giving the sauce body and a smooth consistency.

The step that matters

Stirring the corn-starch mixture into the boiling fish. Corn-starch must be dispersed in cold liquid first, then added to hot liquid while stirring. Otherwise it clumps and the sauce turns lumpy instead of smooth and thick.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Potatothe original
  2. Capsicumfits about as well
  3. Asparagusfits less well
  4. Sweet potatofits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg, butter, corn. 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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