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Salad

Salt Codfish in Milk

Salt codfish soaked, then cooked in milk with wheat germ meal.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Wheat and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,418 recipes. Both carry (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, melon. The science ↓

Salt Codfish in Milk

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the salt codfish in water overnight.

  2. Place the soaked fish in an earthen dish, cover it with milk, and add the wheat germ meal.

Cook

  1. Cook in an Aladdin Pail for five hours.

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. Wheat + milktop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,418 recipes

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

  2. Milk + fishtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,432 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  3. Wheat + fishtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together37 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Salt codfish
Main protein; soaking draws out its salt so the fish can be eaten.
Milk
Cooks the fish gently in liquid, keeping it moist and tender while adding a creamy richness.

The step that matters

Soak the salt codfish overnight. Salt cod is preserved with a heavy coating of salt. Soaking in water draws out much of that salt and softens the dense flesh. Skipping or shortening the soak leaves the finished dish too salty and tough.

“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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