Skip to main content
Main

Baked Salt Fish

A baked dish of soaked salt codfish mixed with butter, crackers, egg, milk, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Baked Salt Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the salt codfish in warm water overnight.

  2. Spread the butter on the bottom of a quart dish.

  3. Shred the soaked fish and add it to the dish.

Mix and bake

  1. Mix in the crushed crackers, pepper, beaten egg, and scalded milk.

  2. Bake for 25 minutes.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  4. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Pepper + milktop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together26,984 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

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

What each ingredient does

Salt codfish
Provides the main body and flavour of the dish as the protein base.
Egg
Binds the mixture and helps it set into a custard-like texture when baked.
Scalded milk
Adds moisture and creaminess, cooking the mixture into a tender, soft bake.
Crackers
Absorb liquid and add body, helping the mixture hold together.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and keeps the bottom of the dish from sticking.

The step that matters

Soaking the salt codfish overnight. Salt cod is heavily cured, and soaking draws salt out of the fish by diffusion into the water. Too short a soak leaves the finished dish overly salty.

“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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes