Name: Salt Cod
Ingredients: Salt cod; Soft water; Vinegar; Parsnips; Cream; Butter; Flour; White pepper; Mustard

Why it works: Parsnip and mustard share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 89 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Salt Cod

Ingredients

Directions

Soak the salt cod in soft water for 6 hours.
Place it on a brick or stone floor for 8 hours.
Soak it again in soft water for another 6 hours and brush it with a hard brush.
Boil the cod gently in soft water until cooked.
Flake the cod onto a serving dish.
Boil and mash the parsnips, then mix with cream and butter rubbed with flour.
Pour the parsnip mixture over the flaked cod.
Serve with egg sauce or whole boiled parsnips.

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.

Parsnip + mustardtop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together89 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Parsnip + flourtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together669 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together14,067 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 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

Swap the white pepper

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

Capersfits better
Tarragonfits better
Nutmegfits better
White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, parsnip, cream, butter, flour, mustard. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.