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Salt Fish

Salted fish simmered until the flesh separates, served with a boiled egg and melted butter sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and horseradish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 562 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Salt Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Soak the fish in water, then wash it well.

  2. Place the fish in a fish kettle with plenty of cold water.

  3. Bring the water to a gentle boil, skimming off any scum.

  4. Simmer until the flesh easily separates from the bone, about 30-45 minutes.

  5. Drain the fish and place it on a dish covered with a napkin.

  6. Garnish with parsley and scraped horseradish.

Make the egg sauce

  1. For the egg sauce, boil the eggs for 10 minutes until hard.

  2. Once cooled, shell and dice the eggs.

  3. Stir the diced eggs into the melted butter and heat gently without boiling.

  4. Serve the egg sauce alongside the fish.

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. Parsley + horseradishtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together562 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Fish + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 recipes

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

  3. Parsley + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  4. Fish + horseradishtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together178 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Salt fish
Is the main protein; soaking and simmering restore moisture and make the flesh flake from the bone.
Hard-boiled eggs
Give the sauce body and a mild, rich texture when diced into the butter.
Melted butter
Provides fat and a smooth, rich base that carries the diced egg.

The step that matters

Heating the egg sauce gently without boiling. Butter and egg proteins can separate or turn grainy and oily if overheated, so the sauce should be warmed slowly and kept below a boil.

Swap the horseradish

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Horseradishthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, parsley, egg, butter. 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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