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Dressing Salt Fish

Salt fish boiled and served with a cream, parsley, butter, and pepper dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper 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 ↓

Dressing Salt Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Soak the salt fish in cold water for 12 hours, or change the water for a shorter soak.

  2. Place the fish in a skillet and cover with cold water. Boil for 15 minutes.

  3. Change the water to fresh hot water and boil for another 15 minutes.

Make the dressing and serve

  1. Serve the fish with drawn butter and garnish with parsley.

  2. For a creamy dressing, boil 1 cup of cream, chopped parsley, butter, and pepper for 10 minutes.

  3. If the cream is thin, add a beaten egg yolk and pour over the fish before serving.

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 + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  4. Parsley + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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 protein, softened by soaking and boiling to remove excess salt.
Cream
Forms the richer dressing that coats the fish and adds smooth body.
Egg yolk
Thickens the cream dressing if it is too thin, adding body and richness.

The step that matters

Changing the water during cooking. Salt fish is very salty, so soaking and boiling in fresh water draw out salt. Skipping the water change or shortening the soak can leave the fish too salty.

Swap the parsley

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, cream, butter, 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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