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Plain Boiled Salt Codfish

A boiled salt codfish served with molasses, melted butter, and hard boiled eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 118,967 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Plain Boiled Salt Codfish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the salt codfish for 12 to 15 hours.

  2. In the morning, remove the fish from the water and clean it with a brush.

  3. Place the fish in a kettle and rub it with 1 teacup of molasses.

Cook

  1. Cover the fish with water and boil for 15 minutes.

  2. Keep the kettle warm for half an hour before dinner.

  3. Boil the fish again for a few minutes before serving.

Serve

  1. Carefully transfer the fish to a dish and cover with a white napkin.

  2. Serve with melted butter and hard boiled eggs.

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Molasses + buttertop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,123 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Molasses + eggtop 34% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,879 recipes

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

What each ingredient does

Salt codfish
The main ingredient, whose long soak draws out its curing salt before cooking.
Molasses
Adds sweetness and a dark colour to the surface of the fish.
Melted butter
Adds fat and richness to the fish at the table.
Hard boiled eggs
Adds soft, rich body alongside the firm fish.

The step that matters

Soaking the salt codfish. Salt cod is heavily cured, and soaking it long enough draws out the excess salt so the flesh tastes mild rather than harshly salty. Soaking too briefly leaves the fish over-salted.

“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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