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Salt Cod Pish

Salt cod simmered with pork scraps, potatoes, beets, carrots, and served with a butter‑flour sauce and boiled egg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,107 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Salt Cod Pish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Soak the whole fish in cold water overnight.

  2. In the morning, wash the fish clean and cut off the tail and fins.

  3. Place the fish in a large pan filled with water, cover, and set over a kettle of warm water.

  4. Cook for 5 to 6 hours.

Make the egg sauce

  1. Boil the egg for 10 minutes, then dip it in cold water and peel.

  2. Cut the egg with a silver spoon and add it to the sauce.

  3. In a pan, blend butter and flour together.

  4. When ready to serve, pour in less than ½ pint of boiling water and bring to a boil.

Serve

  1. Serve the fish whole with egg sauce and pork scraps.

  2. Pour the sauce over the egg and serve immediately.

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. Potato + carrottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  2. Pork + potatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  3. Fish + porktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together668 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  4. Fish + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 recipes

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Salt cod
Is the main protein, softened by soaking and gentle cooking to become tender and flaky.
Butter
Melts with flour to form the base of the sauce, adding richness and smooth body.
Flour
Thickens the butter and water into a smooth sauce as it cooks.
Egg
Adds richness and body to the sauce and forms the sliced accompaniment to the fish.

The step that matters

Adding the boiling water to the butter and flour. Pouring in the water all at once can make the flour clump; whisking steadily while the water is added and brought to a boil keeps the sauce smooth and lets the starch thicken evenly.

Swap the carrot

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

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Carrotthe original

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