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Stewed Salt Cod

A stew of soaked salt cod cooked with butter and milk, served hot with hard‑boiled eggs and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Stewed Salt Cod

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cod

  1. Scald the soaked salt cod in boiling water for 10 minutes.

  2. Scrape the cod clean and flake it into a stew-pan.

Stew

  1. Add butter mixed with enough milk to moisten the cod.

  2. Let it stew gently for 15 minutes.

  3. Season with pepper to taste.

Serve

  1. Serve hot in a deep dish, topped with sliced hard-boiled eggs and sprigs of parsley around the edge.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

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 flesh and savoury, salty flavour of the dish.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavour and keeps the cod soft.
Milk
Moistens the flaked cod so it stews tender rather than dry.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add a mild, creamy garnish that contrasts with the flaked fish.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Nutmegfits about as well
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Cinnamonfits about as well
  4. Tarragonfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, milk, 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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