Name: To Dress Salt Cod or Ling
Ingredients: salt cod or ling; 1 glass vinegar; parsneps (parsnips); 1 cup cream; large piece of butter; 2 tablespoons flour; ¼ teaspoon white pepper; ½ teaspoon 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 ↓

To Dress Salt Cod or Ling

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

Soak and clean the fish, then lay it in water with vinegar overnight.
Boil the fish until cooked, then break it into flakes on a serving dish.

Make the parsnip sauce

Boil the parsnips, then beat them in a mortar.
Combine the beaten parsnips, cream, butter rolled in flour, white pepper, and mustard in a saucepan.
Boil the mixture together.

Serve

Pour the sauce over the fish.
Serve hot.

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

What each ingredient does

Salt cod or ling: Provides the main protein, which flakes apart when cooked and forms the body of the dish.
Parsnips: Their starch and mashed body thicken the sauce and give it a sweet, earthy flavour.
Cream: Adds fat and richness, giving the sauce a smooth, velvety texture.
Flour: Thickens the sauce when rolled into butter and cooked with the liquid.
Butter: Adds fat and flavour, and helps bind the flour into the sauce.

The step that matters

Boil the mixture together. Once flour is added, the sauce must boil long enough for the starch to swell and thicken; otherwise it stays thin and tastes of raw flour.

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.

“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.

Parsnip Cakes12 recipes

Tomato Soup526 recipes

Brown Bread461 recipes

Mutton Broth292 recipes

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To Dress Salt Cod or Ling