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Broiled Salt Fish

Broiled salt fish prepared by soaking, drying, broiling, and buttering.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 ingredients
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Why it works: Fish and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,488 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Broiled Salt Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Cut a square from the thickest part of the salt fish.

  2. Cover it with boiling water and soak in a warm room overnight.

  3. In the morning, pour off the water.

  4. If the fish isn't freshened sufficiently, add hot water again.

  5. Set it on the back of the stove for 10 minutes.

  6. Wipe the fish dry.

Cook and serve

  1. Broil over a clear fire.

  2. Butter the fish when done.

  3. Serve hot.

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 + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 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 fish
Is the main ingredient; soaking softens it and draws out excess salt before cooking.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture to the cooked fish, finishing its surface.

The step that matters

Freshening the salt fish. Salt fish must be soaked long enough to remove excess salt; if it is under-soaked the result tastes overly salty. Changing the water and adding hot water when needed helps the salt diffuse out of the flesh.

“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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