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Salt Cod

Salt cod soaked, boiled, and served with parsley, egg sauce, mashed potatoes, and chopped eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Sauce and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 25% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,073 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Salt Cod

Ingredients

Directions

Soak and prepare

  1. Soak the salt cod in soft water for 6 hours.

  2. Place the cod on a brick or stone floor for 8 hours.

  3. Soak the cod again in soft water for another 6 hours.

  4. Brush the cod with a hard brush.

Cook and serve

  1. Boil the cod gently in soft water until it swells.

  2. Serve with parsley and egg sauce.

  3. To reheat, separate the cod into flakes and mix with a good sauce and chopped eggs, serving with a wall of mashed potatoes or mashed 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. Sauce + potatotop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,073 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Egg + potatotop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,978 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  3. Egg + saucetop 39% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,895 recipes

Egg and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,895 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
Main protein; soaking removes salt so the flesh becomes tender and mild.
Soft water
Used for soaking and boiling, drawing out salt and softening the fish.
Egg sauce
Adds richness and moisture to the flaked cod.
Chopped eggs
Adds body and a rich, savoury texture to the sauce.
Mashed potatoes
Provides a starchy base that carries the fish and sauce.

The step that matters

Boil the cod gently. Gentle heat lets the salted, rehydrated fish swell and turn tender; a hard boil would toughen and break up the flesh.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, sauce):

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sauce. 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.

More salt cod recipes

Stewed 11with Egg Sauce 10Boiled 9Egg Sauce for 7Chowder 7Creamed 6 See all 24 →

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