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Mo Rue. — Salt Cod

Salt cod served in a sauce of flour, butter, pepper, milk, and sour grapes or lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Mo Rue. — Salt Cod

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cod

  1. Scale and wash the salt cod.

  2. Boil the cod in river water, then drain.

  3. Flake the cod or leave it whole.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. In a stewpan, mix flour, butter, and pepper with milk.

  2. Add sour grapes or lemon juice and thicken the sauce over heat.

  3. Heat the cod in the sauce before serving.

  4. Optionally, add chopped parsley and green onions.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Pepper + grapetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,909 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth, cohesive sauce as it cooks.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the sauce a silkier mouthfeel.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, carrying the flour and butter.
Sour grapes or lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances the salty cod.

The step that matters

Thicken the sauce over heat. Flour needs to be heated in the liquid long enough to swell and gelatinize, or the sauce stays pasty and tastes floury. Keep the heat moderate and stir so it does not scorch or lump.

Swap the parsley

The recipe marks parsley as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, butter, pepper, milk, grape, onion):

  1. Cinnamonfits about as well
  2. Thymefits about as well
  3. Cardamomfits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, pepper, milk, grape, onion. 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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