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Boiled Salt Fish

A dish of salt fish boiled, seasoned with pepper, and finished with melted butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 ↓

Boiled Salt Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the salt fish in cold water for 24 hours, changing the water 2 or 3 times, or use warm water for a shorter soak.

  2. Drain and dry the fish.

Cook and serve

  1. Broil the fish briskly for about 10 to 12 minutes.

  2. Season with pepper and a little salt if needed.

  3. Pour melted butter over the fish before serving.

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 + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,948 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Salt fish
Cured, salty protein whose excess salt is drawn out by soaking before cooking.
Melted butter
Adds richness and flavor and coats the fish with fat for a smooth finish.

The step that matters

Soaking the salt fish. Soaking draws salt out of the cured fish through diffusion. Too short a soak leaves the fish overly salty, while changing the water keeps the salt gradient steep so the salt keeps leaving the flesh.

“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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