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Cod, Salted, with Parsnips

Salted cod simmered gently, served with boiled parsnips and a lemon‑flavored egg sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Cod, Salted, with Parsnips

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cod

  1. Soak the salted cod in water for 24 hours, then drain.

  2. Pour fresh cold water over the cod and heat it gradually until tender, without boiling.

  3. Drain the cod again and place it on a hot dish.

Assemble and serve

  1. Garnish with boiled parsnips.

  2. Cover with egg sauce made by thickening milk with flour, adding butter, salt, pepper, lemon juice, and chopped hard-boiled eggs.

  3. Garnish the dish with parsley.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Parsnip + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together484 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Salted cod
Forms the main body of the dish; soaking removes excess salt so the fish is mild and flaky.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth, pourable egg sauce.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, giving it body and richness.
Butter
Adds fat to the sauce, giving it a rounder, richer flavour and smoother texture.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add body and a creamy texture to the sauce, with chopped pieces through it.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich sauce and balances the salted fish.

The step that matters

Heating the cod gradually without boiling. Boiling toughens and dries fish protein and can break the flesh apart. Gentle, gradual heating in water just below a simmer cooks the cod evenly until tender and moist.

Swap the parsnip

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits about as well
  3. Asparagusfits about as well
  4. Parsnipthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, flour, butter, pepper, lemon, egg, parsley. 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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