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Salt Cod with Egg Sauce

Salt cod served with a sauce of milk, cornflour, eggs, butter, parsley, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Salt Cod with Egg Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Pick or chop the soaked and boiled salt cod finely.

Make the sauce

  1. Heat the milk in a saucepan.

  2. Thicken the milk with cornflour, then add the mashed potato.

  3. Stir in the butter, beaten eggs, and parsley.

Combine and serve

  1. Add the fish and mix until heated through.

  2. Pour into a deep dish and serve.

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. Parsley + potatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,855 recipes

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

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  4. Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Milk + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 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 cod
Provides the main flesh and savoury flavour of the dish.
Eggs
Set with heat to enrich the sauce and give it a creamy body.
Mashed potato
Adds bulk and softness, helping the mixture hold together.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, adding moisture and richness.
Cornflour
Thickens the milk so the sauce becomes smooth and coating.
Butter
Adds fat for richer flavour and a silkier texture.

The step that matters

Thicken the milk with cornflour, then add the mashed potato. Cornflour must be fully dispersed and heated to thicken; stirring it into hot milk without lumps keeps the sauce smooth. Beaten eggs are added later, so the mixture should not be boiled hard after they go in, or they may scramble.

Swap the parsley

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, flour, egg, butter, potato, fish, pepper. 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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