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To Dress Salt Cod or Ling

Salt cod or ling is soaked, boiled, flaked and served with a mashed parsnip sauce made with cream, butter and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Vinegar and mustard are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,067 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

To Dress Salt Cod or Ling

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Soak the salt cod or ling in water with vinegar overnight.

  2. Boil the fish until cooked, then break it into flakes on a serving dish.

Make the parsnip sauce

  1. Boil the parsnips, then mash them in a mortar.

  2. In a saucepan, combine the mashed parsnips, cream, butter, flour, white pepper, and mustard; heat until warm but do not boil.

Serve

  1. Pour the sauce over the fish and serve.

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. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + mustardtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,066 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Vinegar + white peppertop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,154 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 or ling
Provides the main fish body, which is flaked and served under the sauce.
Parsnips (in the method)
Supply starch and sweetness, giving the sauce body and a mellow flavour when mashed.
Cream
Adds richness and moisture, helping the sauce become smooth and velvety.
Butter
Contributes fat for richness and a silky mouthfeel in the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce by absorbing liquid as it warms.
Mustard
Adds a sharp, pungent note that balances the richness of the cream and butter.

The step that matters

Heat the sauce without boiling. Once flour is thickening cream and butter, boiling can cause the sauce to break or turn grainy, and gentle warming keeps it smooth.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vinegar, cream, butter, flour, mustard):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, cream, butter, flour, mustard. 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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