Name: Salt Cod
Ingredients: Salt fish; Water; Lemon; Potatoes; Butter

Why it works: Fish and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,488 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Salt Cod

Ingredients

Directions

Soak a piece of salt fish in tepid water for 6 hours, then in cold water for another 6 hours, changing the water 3 or 4 times.
Place the fish in a saucepan and nearly fill it with cold water.
Bring the water to a boil.
Skim off any foam that forms.
Simmer the fish until cooked.
Drain the fish and place it on a dish.
Make melted butter and squeeze in the juice of a lemon, or use egg sauce if preferred.
Pour the sauce over the fish and garnish with plain boiled potatoes.

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.

Fish + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,488 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Lemon + potatotop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,230 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,456 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Fish + potatotop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together134 recipes

Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).
Fish + lemontop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,889 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).