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The Best Way to Soak Salt Fish

Soaks salt fish in tepid water, optionally adding vinegar and baking soda, to rehydrate and test freshness.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Fish and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 26% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,036 recipes. Both carry acetoin, which smells butter, cream. The science ↓

The Best Way to Soak Salt Fish

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Soak the salt fish in plenty of tepid water.

  2. Add 1 cup of vinegar for every gallon of water if the fish is very dry.

  3. Use 1 tablespoon of baking soda for every gallon of water.

  4. Taste a flake to check if it is sufficiently fresh; avoid over-soaking.

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 + vinegartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,036 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetoin (butter, cream).

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

What each ingredient does

Salt fish
The main ingredient being desalted and rehydrated by soaking in water.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that can help loosen and soften very dry fish during soaking.
Baking soda
Raises the water's alkalinity, which can help soften the fish's proteins during soaking.

The step that matters

Taste a flake to check freshness; avoid over-soaking. Salt fish left too long in water loses flavor and can turn soft and mushy as its proteins break down. Checking a flake by taste lets you stop soaking once the salt has drawn out enough, while the texture still holds together.

“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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