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Boiled Codfish— Salt

A boiled codfish served with egg sauce or cold boiled eggs and drawn butter or cream gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and butter 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 ↓

Boiled Codfish— Salt

Ingredients

Directions

Soak

  1. Soak the codfish in lukewarm water overnight or for several hours, changing the water several times.

Cook

  1. About one hour before dinner, place the fish in cold fresh water and set over the fire.

  2. Let it come to a boil or just simmer for 15 minutes, but do not let it boil hard.

Serve

  1. Remove the fish from the water, drain it, and serve with egg sauce or sliced cold boiled eggs topped with drawn butter or cream gravy.

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. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Codfish
Forms the main body of the dish; soaking draws out salt so the flesh turns mild and tender.
Butter or cream gravy
Adds fat and richness that moistens the mild, lean flesh of the cooked fish.

The step that matters

Simmer, do not boil hard. A hard boil toughens and breaks up delicate fish proteins, leaving the flesh dry and ragged. A gentle simmer cooks it evenly while keeping it moist and intact.

“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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