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Salt Fish

Salted fish served with a butter and flour sauce flavored with sea salt, chili vinegar, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and parsnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 484 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Salt Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Soak the salt fish for 24 hours, changing the water 2-3 times.

  2. Boil the fish, then remove skin and bones, and tear it into flakes.

Make the sauce

  1. In a clean saucepan, mix flour with butter until smooth.

  2. Stir over low heat until the butter is melted, then add salt and boiling water.

  3. Stir for a few minutes, then add chili vinegar and chopped parsley.

  4. Bring the sauce to a boil, then add the flaked fish.

  5. Stir gently over low heat until the fish is heated through.

Serve

  1. Serve on a hot dish with boiled parsnips or 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. Parsley + parsniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together484 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Flour + parsniptop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together669 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 savoury, salty flesh that the sauce coats and carries.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the sauce a smooth, silky texture.
Flour
Thickens the butter and water into a smooth, cohesive sauce.
Chili vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that brightens the rich butter sauce.

The step that matters

Bring the sauce to a boil, then add the flaked fish.. Flour thickens the sauce only once it has been heated enough to cook the starch. Adding fish before the sauce has thickened can leave it thin and watery, and gentle heat afterward keeps the fish tender rather than tough.

Swap the parsnip

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, butter, flour, vinegar, parsley):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Parsnipthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, butter, flour, vinegar, parsley. 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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