Skip to main content
Main

Salt Cod

Salt Cod is a fish dish prepared by soaking in water and vinegar, then boiling, served with parsnips and egg sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsnip and sauce work together. They rank in the top 23% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 156 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Salt Cod

Ingredients

Directions

Soak the fish

  1. Soak the salt cod in clean cold water with a slight amount of vinegar for 8 hours.

  2. Drain the fish for 3 to 4 hours.

  3. Soak the fish again for 4 hours.

Cook and serve

  1. Place the fish in a fish kettle with plenty of cold soft water.

  2. Bring the water to a boil slowly, then reduce the heat and cook gradually until done.

  3. Serve with parsnips and egg sauce.

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. Parsnip + saucetop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together156 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Vinegar + parsniptop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together212 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Vinegar + saucetop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,844 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Vinegar + eggtop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,922 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Parsnip + eggtop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together442 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

Vinegar and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,922 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 cod
Forms the main body of the dish, and soaking restores moisture and softens its firm texture.
Parsnips
Add natural sweetness and a soft texture to accompany the fish.

The step that matters

Bring the water to a boil slowly, then reduce the heat. Gentle, gradual heating keeps the fish cooking evenly without boiling it hard, which would toughen the proteins and break the flesh apart.

Swap the parsnip

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vinegar, egg, sauce):

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Horseradishfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Parsnipthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, egg, sauce. 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.

More salt cod recipes

Stewed 11with Egg Sauce 10Boiled 9Egg Sauce for 7Chowder 7Creamed 6 See all 24 →

You might also like

Parsnip CakesParsnip Cakes12 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes