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To Boil Salt Fish

A boiled salt fish served with boiled parsnips and egg sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Fish and sauce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 20% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,487 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

To Boil Salt Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the salt fish into pieces and soak in cold water for several hours.

Cook and serve

  1. Place the fish pieces in a saucepan with cold water and boil for about 20 minutes.

  2. Serve the fish with egg sauce and boiled parsnips in separate dishes.

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. Fish + saucetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,487 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Fish + eggtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,782 recipes

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

  3. Parsnip + saucetop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together156 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Fish + parsniptop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together57 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

  5. Parsnip + eggtop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together442 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

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

What each ingredient does

Salt fish
Soaking draws out salt, and boiling cooks the fish until it is tender and flaky.
Parsnips
Boiling softens them to a tender, sweet texture that complements the salty fish.
Egg sauce
Its rich, creamy texture adds fat and moisture to balance the salted fish.

The step that matters

Soaking the salt fish. Salt fish is heavily cured, so soaking it for several hours in cold water draws out excess salt. Skipping or shortening this step leaves the fish too salty to eat comfortably.

Swap the parsnip

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, 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.

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