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Salt Fish, Oe Dun Fish

A whole salt fish is soaked overnight, scalded, then boiled and served with drawn butter and fried pork scraps.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Fish and pork work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 668 recipes. Both carry 4-heptenal, which smells creamy, biscuit. The science ↓

Salt Fish, Oe Dun Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Soak and clean

  1. Soak the whole fish in a fish kettle with 6-8 quarts of water overnight.

  2. The next morning, wash the fish thoroughly and wash the kettle thoroughly.

  3. Place the fish back in the kettle with fresh water.

  4. Heat the water until scalding, but not boiling.

Cook and serve

  1. One hour before serving, transfer the fish to a pan of cold water and wash off the skin and fins of the fish.

  2. Wash the kettle again.

  3. Return the fish to the kettle and add fresh water.

  4. Boil for 30 minutes.

  5. If not cooking a whole fish, cut it into 8-inch pieces.

  6. Serve the fish on a clean napkin on a fish dish with drawn butter and pork scraps.

  7. Garnish the pieces with sliced boiled eggs and boiled beets.

Make the pork scraps

  1. To make pork scraps, cut the fat salt pork into small squares.

  2. Fry the pork squares in a pan until light brown.

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. Fish + porktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together668 recipes

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

  2. Fish + eggtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,782 recipes

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

  3. Pork + eggtop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,387 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

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

What each ingredient does

Whole fish
Forms the main dish; soaking and scalding firm and freshen its flesh before cooking.
Fat salt pork
Renders fat and crisp browned bits that add savoury flavour and texture to the dish.

The step that matters

Heat the water until scalding, but not boiling. Water held just below a boil cooks the fish gently, so the flesh stays moist and tender rather than tough and falling apart.

“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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