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Salt Cod

Salt cod simmered after soaking, served with a butter‑lemon egg sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Salt Cod

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the salt cod

  1. Soak the salt cod in a mixture of vinegar and water for 24 hours, changing the liquid often.

  2. Place the soaked fish in a large pot with plenty of cold water.

  3. Heat the water gradually until it boils.

  4. Remove the pot from the heat.

  5. Let the fish sit in the hot water until cooked through.

Make the egg sauce

  1. Chop the hard-boiled eggs to your preferred size.

  2. In a saucepan, melt a piece of butter with a little water, salt, and flour.

  3. Add the chopped eggs and lemon juice to the melted butter mixture.

  4. Bring the mixture to a boil.

Serve

  1. Serve the sauce with 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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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
Forms the main body of the dish; soaking removes its excess salt before cooking.
Butter
Enriches the sauce with fat, giving it a smooth, rich texture.
Flour
Thickens the melted butter and water into a smooth base for the sauce.
6 hard-boiled eggs
Chopped into the sauce, they add body and a rich, creamy texture.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich egg and butter sauce.

The step that matters

Heating the fish gradually and removing the pot from the heat. Gentle heating and then resting the fish in hot water cooks it through slowly, keeping it moist and tender; boiling it hard would toughen and break up the flesh.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Vanillafits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, butter, flour, egg. 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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