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Salt Fish

Salted fish is prepared by soaking, boiling, and serving with egg sauce, parsnips, and mashed potatoes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,023 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Salt Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Soak the salt fish in soft water for 1 to 3 nights, changing the water 2 to 3 times.

  2. Set the fish in cold or lukewarm water and bring it to a slow boil.

  3. Simmer the fish for 30 minutes to 1.5 hours.

  4. Remove the fish from the pot and drain it, removing any bones and skin.

  5. Rinse the fish with 1 quart of boiling water.

Serve

  1. Serve the fish with egg sauce, parsnips, and mashed potatoes.

  2. For a variation, stew the fish in gravy flavored with onions or shallots, thickened with flour, butter, and cream.

  3. Mash potatoes or parsnips with cream and butter to serve alongside.

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 + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Parsnip + horseradishtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together42 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Potato + horseradishtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Parsnip + potatotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together353 recipes

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

  5. Horseradish + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,784 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Salt fish
Salting and soaking preserve the fish and season it, and the soaking draws out much of the salt.
Flour
Thickens the gravy so it coats the fish when the variation is stewed.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the gravy and the mashed vegetables.
Cream
Adds richness and smoothness to the mashed vegetables and the gravy variation.

The step that matters

Soaking and changing the water. Soaking in fresh water for several nights draws salt out of the cured fish. Too little soaking leaves it overly salty, while the repeated water changes remove salt that has leached out so the flesh does not become waterlogged or bland.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, egg, sauce, parsnip, potato, horseradish, flour):

  1. Beetrootfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, egg, sauce, parsnip, potato, horseradish, 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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