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Salt Fish

Salted fish soaked, washed, and cooked by frying or boiling, served with butter and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Fish and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,488 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Salt Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the salt fish overnight in a large vessel, washing it in two waters and scraping off the scales.

Cook and serve

  1. Dip herrings in meal and fry them in hot bacon fat or lard.

  2. For mackerel, boil and serve with butter and a slice of lemon, or broil and serve the same way.

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

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

  2. Fish + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,889 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Salt fish
Main protein, which is salt-cured and must be soaked to remove excess salt.
Meal
Coating that forms a crisp, golden crust when the herring is fried.
Bacon fat or lard
Frying fat that conducts heat evenly and adds savory flavor and browning.
Butter
Serving fat that adds richness and moisture to the cooked mackerel.
Lemon
Adds acidity and bright aroma that cut the richness of the fish and fat.

The step that matters

Soaking the salt fish overnight. Salt fish is heavily cured, and soaking draws out surplus salt through diffusion. Soaking too briefly leaves the fish harshly salty, while the washing in fresh water removes salt and loose scales.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Coconutfits better
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Applefits less well
  4. Peachfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, 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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