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Salt Cod

A dish of flaked salt cod served with a parsnip butter and cream mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsnip and nutmeg share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 98 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Salt Cod

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cod

  1. Soak the salt cod in water overnight with vinegar to draw out the salt.

  2. Boil the cod until tender, then break it into flakes on a serving dish.

Make the parsnip mash

  1. Boil and mash the parsnips, then mix with butter and cream.

Serve

  1. Pour the parsnip mixture over the cod or serve with egg sauce.

  2. Serve immediately on a warm plate.

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. Parsnip + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together98 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Parsnip + flourtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together669 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  4. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  5. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Salt cod
Main protein, flaked after cooking to form the body of the dish.
Vinegar
Added to the soaking water to help draw out salt from the cod.
Parsnips
Boiled and mashed to form a soft, sweet base for the dish.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the mashed parsnips.
Cream
Adds moisture and smoothness to the mashed parsnips.

The step that matters

Soaking the salt cod. Salt cod must soak long enough to draw out excess salt; too little soaking leaves the fish overly salty, while the vinegar helps loosen the salt from the flesh.

Swap the parsnip

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Parsnipthe original

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

More salt cod recipes

Stewed 11with Egg Sauce 10Boiled 9Egg Sauce for 7Chowder 7Creamed 6 See all 24 →

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