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Curious French Method of Dressing Salt Fish

A salted fish dish prepared with minced fish, sautéed onions, butter, pepper, nutmeg, soaked French rolls, oysters, and baked with melted butter and grated bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Curious French Method of Dressing Salt Fish

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the filling

  1. Mince the flesh of the carp, removing bones and skin.

  2. In a pan, melt the butter and sauté the onions.

  3. Add the minced fish, season with pepper and nutmeg.

  4. Soak the French rolls in milk and mince them with the flesh from the salt fish.

  5. Mix the soaked rolls with the fish mixture and some butter and nutmeg.

Assemble and bake

  1. Spread the mixture in a dish, placing the whole cod in the center.

  2. Top with oysters, pour melted butter over, and sprinkle with grated bread.

  3. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until browned.

Serve

  1. Make a sauce with milk, butter, and nutmeg, serving some over the fish and the rest in a bowl.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  3. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  4. Fish + oystertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together496 recipes

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

  5. Fish + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

French rolls
Soaked in milk, they add moisture and body to the fish filling.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavor and helping the top brown.
Onions
Softened in butter, they add sweetness and aroma to the filling.
Carp
Forms the main body of the filling, giving it its savoury flavour.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, butter, pepper, nutmeg, milk, oyster, bread):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, butter, pepper, nutmeg, milk, oyster, bread. 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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